Falsify (2017)

Here the heroes individually are insignificant, helpless. Together they can make a difference.

"Falsify" (also "Distorted") tells an exciting story about the business with official truth. I think this works particularly well as the KDrama offers a critical examination of the rather difficult concept of 'truth', which can be bent and manipulated depending on the eye of the viewer. Is the rule of law just a pretty farce? Rather an eloquent backdrop for the mighty who operate in the shadow? Does actually anything like justice exist? What truth are we hearing? Which one do we want to hear? Which preferably not? Is it always so good to bring the truth to light?

Regarding the recently common term 'lying media', used as an accusations from all different directions, "Falsify" offers a burning issue. Also a bit of an 'Watergate Affair' in South Korean garb (as the underlying case resembles some real South Korean one). Sophisticated journalism and sensation-hungry tabloids, public prosecutors and lawyers as law enforcement officers, so called respectable (yet cheating) businessmen as well as gangs are all frighteningly close together. Against this background, seldom has sich wide range of positions, attitudes and motivations been thus successfully intertwined and presented close to touch on the basis of individual fates, altogether mixed up in an exciting story. Abysses open up in view of social ideals and their illusions. And yet hope is not lost in the face of (quite deadly) superiority.

This is definitely not a ´Marvel´-like (super)hero story. Here the 'heroes' individually are insignificant, inconspicuous, fallible, and to some extend helpless puppets in a complex mechanism that is controlled by opaque forces. However, together they can make a difference in co-creation - by bundling their potentials, throwing their prejudices overboard, getting involved with each other, learning to trust each other (despite initial contempt), and no longer reflecting on what separates them. The key is a unifying idea that is bigger than each individual (with their physical, emotional or social needs). They want to give this idea shape, body, weight and charisma with all imaginable creative means. This cross-personal idea is what gives them strength (even in the face of massive personal threats) and overcomes fear. Here it is the idea of ​​a democratic constitutional state in which there is justice for ALL; in which ALL are equal before the law; in which every citizen can/must bear responsibility for his/her actions - the price for the freedom of responsible citizens: a minimum consensus of laws, rights and obligations that are binding and binding for everyone.

This idea sounds nicer and more promising than it really is, because it usually stays with the idea that is trampled on behind the scenes. Yet, it is (real) people who fill this (abstract) idea with life. But where there are people, there are also their corruptibility, their greed, their vulnerability to blackmail and their cowardice, as well as the fitting people to unscrupulously exploit such weak points. South Korea's young democracy and long history of corruption and mighty ones operating in the shadow offers a realistic, scandal-ridden environment to process this exciting and at the same time outrageous KDrama - thus offering a wide range of gray tones, emotionally differentiated and authentic.

By following various protagonists from the press and the courts, the story begins with individual threads of action that are at best loosely connected to one another, but which become entangled over the course of the story and together form a strong strand that everyone can pull on together. So a bit of patience is required from the audience, but it pays off! The differently motivated characters come to life in a tangible way, become comprehensible in good and bad and reveal a reality about the business with truth that makes you shudder. We as the audience are ourselves cleverly integrated as part of the story - as representatives of public opinion and thus as perpetrators and victims at the same time.

Wow!
Good job. Ambitous. Thought-provoking.

P.S.:
Also ideally suited for repeated series enjoyment due to the differentiated, complex story.

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