starrymush

Farewell my Concubine (1996) 🇨🇳

The doomed relationship between a beautiful male China opera actor who is forced into a feminine role and his fellow star. Set against a backdrop of regime changes from the Republic Era, Japanese occupation to the modern PRC.

Gabbeh (1998) 🇮🇷 🇹🇯

Named after a type of Persian rug- the art form through which we experience a girl’s life, from her family’s nomadic culture to her romance and marriage.

The Silence (1996) 🇮🇷 🇹🇯

A blind boy who repairs instruments sees the world through music. Explores concepts of Sufism (Islamic mysticism) as seen in Rumi’s poetry. (Same director as above)

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring（2003)🇰🇷

A young monk lives with his elderly master in a floating temple on a lake. We follow the seasons of his life, told via Buddhist symbolism and philosophy.

Death of a Beauty/ 美人之死 (1986) 🇨🇳

Based on an Uyghur folktale. A woman who was once renowned for her beauty now lives in an old castle, hiding her burned face even as the prince who loves her searches for her.

On the Silver Globe 🇵🇱

Surreal sci-fi film about space travelers who crash on a primitive planet, starting a religion among the inhabitants as divine figures even as they long for the heaven that is old earth. A ‘parody’ of the origins of the Abrahamic faiths(?)

sources: l.e.s. by donald glover // this year by the mountain goats // maya hornbacher, madness // watchisjawdrop on tumblr // wuntrum on tumblr // kim kardashian // unknown // godblessryankent on tiktok // nayyirah waheed // unknown // lev st. valentine

hyuna, as a child, seemed to have a very optimistic outlook on the world, and that she was going to end up saving the world that the seygein had tried confining her in. however, because of her trauma, with losing her other half, Hyunwoo, and how the man she loved was so mentally unstable and traumatizing, she gained the mentality that in her society, the people she loved and herself could never have a chance of a normal life, even as she led her rebel friends forward. despite this, she still wants to save other lives, so she follows the rocket plan, in hopes of making someone in the future happy. however, because of her own selfish fears, she cannot bring herself to save the people in the present, because a deep part of her believes that she would be ruined all over again.

mizi, on the other hand, does not want to sit back and do nothing for the future, because she has already done something similar to that once. the lack of initiative for sua is something that she deeply regrets, and she does not want that to happen again, with her friends that are still alive. she doesn’t want to think that people in the future are the only ones who deserve happiness, because to her, it means that all of her actions to live would mean that sua died for nothing. this is why she takes initiative in karma, because she’s at her lowest, and seems to accept the idea that no human deserves happiness, because in the end, it would still cause suffering. hyuna’s death was enough reason for her to believe that this plan wouldn’t work for anyone.

their entire dynamic, even platonic, shows how deep alien stage relationships can go. hyuna, because of how she joined the rebellion after her immense trauma, believes that love can only exist after the catalyst of hurt, which is why she chooses to go through with her plan, and it is also why she dies for luka, not only as a revenge, but for a fleeting hope, that he might be able to grow from the event, because she doesn’t want him to keep suffering in the same environment. mizi believes that letting suffering happen only leads to worse things, because of the way that it affected not only her, but sua. she let sua hurt herself and die, because she wanted to keep up their fantasy, and it only slapped her in the face after sua’s death.

there are a lot of more parallels for these two, much of which that i will list out quickly as they couldn’t fit in the main text.

- mizi wearing glasses for a facade of innocence in anakt, but that facade falling in the main story, which is why she has no glasses, while hyuna doesn’t wear glasses in anakt, but in the rebellion, she does, showing how she seems to want to overlook the events of alien stage.

- mizi regressing back into the past post karma, while hyuna actively avoids it, as seen with her alcohol addiction.