Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
As usual, the epigraph told me exactly where this was going. But then, I think I pretty much always knew. Aof is always gentle with his characters; they always get what they need in the end. As a storyteller, he's much more about the journey than the destination. Which is why his devotion to the fakeout is kinda annoying, but I digress.
When Barth admitted he'd been basically waiting to see if Tanrak would truly stay or whether he'd run back to Magdalene, genuinely it hadn't even occurred to me that he might. For me, Tanrak would never have left in the first place unless he was certain. Did he feel guilt about running away from the people who gave him home and family for so long, sure, and we know that never quite left him. But from the moment he opened that bathroom door, he never doubted his feelings for Barth or Barth's for him, only whether they would be accepted by others.
I enjoyed where this show landed on the question of faith. I have always read Barth's apostasy as disappointment, not disbelief, and I feel like that bore out here. His relationship with God is complicated, but he does believe. He won't wear the cross his mother gave him, but he will say grace at Auntie Lek's table, and observe and ponder her notions of faith. He gently chides his mother for asking if he prays, but also offers to pray for her, and does, genuinely. He is working through his own understanding of God and faith, just like Tanrak, and even though they have very different starting points, their end points are quite close together. Because, as the show's thesis has been from the start, love is what makes faith resound.
Speaking of Auntie Lek and Busaya, Mary figures were instrumental to this episode. Auntie Lek connecting us to and standing in for Tanrak's parents, telling him that love and faith and happiness could all coexist for him. I noted in my earlier musings on this show how little joy Tanrak's faith seemed to bring him, how grimly he held to God, like an ordeal he had to endure to be reunited with his parents. Auntie Lek comes right in and says 'enough of that, you can be happy, you should be happy, God wants you to be happy.' And you can see Tanrak lighten after that night, even as he still carries a shard of the guilt (very Catholic of him, that niggling splinter of guilt never quite leaves us).
Barth's visit with Busaya...man I cried BUCKETS. There is so much there, I'm not sure I could even capture it all. The fact that he basically lies to her the whole time, but you understand WHY, and so does Tanrak. The way he's so chill about the whole visit even as Tanrak is nervous, until she's sitting in front of him and then it's just streams of tears. All Barth's pain just overflows in that conversation, and it makes you appreciate how much he's been holding in. The way she entreats Tanrak to take care of her baby who would come home and whinge about school. And then Barth asks her if she loves him more than God, and baby boy she committed a mortal sin for you, you know the answer, but he still needed to hear her say it. Something lifted off him after that as well, the burden of the anger he'd been carrying toward God feels gone. It's why when he sees the crucifix on the wall, he can pray for his mother, and mean it.
And then, finally relieved of their burdens, and together, and alone, they can allow themselves to just...be. Engage in a little light teenage rebellion. Drink a beer, take a puff on a cigarette, make out, fool around. It's so lovely.
Seeing them in the future, getting to see a tiny glimpse of their lives together, and knowing that they struggled but never let go, I loved that. Tanrak getting to finally release that shard of guilt with Father Arnon, I loved that.
In terms of niggles, I was a little disappointed to not get a real resolution between Tanrak and Kongdech. It felt very 'time passes', and that's real, but it also felt a titch unsatisfying. I also feel like the fakeout on the morning after their night together bleeding into who was getting ordained was unnecessarily drawn out. I also didn't like the music montages, they really broke immersion in the story for me. I love a montage but these felt more like music videos. As a stylistic choice, I'd have preferred not to have them. Overall though, loved this show, and all the things it had to say about love and faith.
