Move to Heaven (2021)

A moving final move (to heaven) – a meaningful drama

STORY
The male lead, Han Geu-ru (Tang Jun Sang) ran a cleaning company called ‘Move to Heaven’. This is unlike your usual cleaning company, but one which offered trauma cleaning services. Geu-ru ran the company with his father but the latter passed away suddenly and he was left to run the company with his uncle who became his guardian, Cho Sang-Gu (Lee Je Hoon) and his neighbor, Yoon Na-Mu (Hong Seung Hee), both of whom were newbies to trauma cleaning.

ACTING
I am not familiar with the cast in this drama and I do not think they are famous celebrities, but I have no complaints about their acting. All of them did their job well, especially the 18-year-old Tang Jun Sang. His portrayal as Han Geu-ru with Asperger’s Disorder was very believable. Kudos to him.

I started watching this drama with no inkling of what it was about because I did not read the synopsis, comments or reviews. I was only attracted to its 9.2 rating in MDL and after watching this 10-episode drama, I think it does deserve the high rating, but also feel that perhaps more episodes would have been better.

‘Move to Heaven’ was called upon each time by the police, funeral homes, the family of the deceased or in one case, the deceased himself (made advance booking) to clean, disinfect the place, clear away the belongings and clean up the detritus from bodies sometimes found dead after a few days or even weeks and months after death. Basically, to help the deceased in their final move, as the drama put it.

At the threshold of the place he was about to clean, Geu-ru would always recite a prayer and play a sentimental classical piece. He would then first clean away dried blood and body fluids if there were any, that might have stained the floor, walls of the place before picking up the items in the place and organizing the more intimate belongings in a yellow box which he would then pass to the next-of-kin or the closest or most intimate person of the deceased. Lastly, he would disinfect the place if deemed necessary before leaving.

This drama gave us good glimpses of what a trauma cleaner was about and how the job was done, a job considered gruesome and even inauspicious by some, judging from the drama. It was an eye-opener for me.

It was helping families in distress as it would be a stressful and difficult time for family members who might be emotionally disturbed or busy with last-minute arrangements for the deceased. And whenever they see the blood, it might remind them of the deceased. It was a truly meaningful job.

I did however wonder about the accuracy of the job portrayal as my understanding was trauma cleaners would be cladded in personal protective gear, armed with tongs and wore rubber gloves, but in this drama, Geu-ru wore only his uniform and sometimes picked up the items with his bare hands.

There was never a boring moment, however, when Geu-ru did each case (on average there was a new case every two episodes), because every deceased and every story behind the death was different and portrayed realistically.
In fact, the only boring scenes of the drama were those when Geu-ru was not doing his job and that was mainly the scenes of his uncle who was previously a boxer. Nothing interesting about those scenes with his uncle trying to get away from his past and overcome the trauma of his friend’s accident. Those, to me, were not the focus of the drama and seemed more like fillers.

This was a drama about life, death and bidding farewell to the dead and to add on emphatically, it was not just a drama about trauma cleaning, because Geu-ru was a young man with Asperger's Disorder, a developmental disorder with difficulty relating to others socially and their behavior and his thinking patterns tended to be rigid and repetitive.
Perhaps it was because of his disorder that he did not get too emotional on each job, I guess.
God was fair. He gave him an extraordinary photographic memory, resulting in him being able to piece together the stories of the deceased and bring closure to the lives of many of them. It was satisfying in a way. Exceptional ability, I would say. It was as though the items spoke to him through his heart. That was perhaps why he was able to pass the belongings to their closest or intimate people himself. I believe this was not part of a normal trauma cleaner’s job so I saw it as a special service by ‘Move to Heaven’.

As the drama progressed, I realized that this drama was not just about trauma cleaning. It was also about Asperger’s Disorder. When his father left the world, I was actually worried for Geu-ru, I wondered how he was going to survive by himself after having lost the person who had impacted his life so much and taught him how to live. It was touching to see frequent flashbacks of his father’s words continuing to spur him on.

He was able to eventually bid farewell formally and put aside his emotions to clear his father’s room in the house - as a trauma cleaner. That scene to me was sad as he went through his father’s items, almost all of which were filled with memories of their lives together. Those personal items, in a normal typical case for him, would have just been belongings of ‘another deceased’.

I would not say that this drama was depressing or ‘heavy’ for the heart. Nevertheless, it was not a light-hearted drama either, because after all, this was about death.

The cleaning was portrayed in a respectful and matter-of-fact way which I liked, but the stories behind the items were heartbreaking. I shed tears of sadness and pity because there was one who took his own life (actually his own and his wife’s lives) and the rest of the deceased did not predict their untimely death and things were left uncompleted and words left unsaid. Watching this drama made me cherish life more. We need to treasure our relationships with our loved ones, our friends and our families because anytime we can just say goodbye.

If there was anything negative to comment, it would be that there were too few episodes which I mentioned earlier above. It was not rushed in any way, but I would have liked to see more cases, more variety in the cases faced by Geu-ru, more depth into trauma cleaning like showing the challenges of the job, more of Geu-ru's character development as well as more relationship development between him and his uncle.

I would not recommend this drama if you are looking for a light-hearted one that makes you laugh, but if you want to watch one which makes you ponder a little more about your life or simply if you want to have a better understanding of what a trauma cleaner is about, consider this drama.

Do know that there are one or two gruesome scenes in the beginning, but this is all part and parcel of the job and they are handling with what was a human life after all.

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