Still Shining: The Illusory Spark of Nostalgia

Once the credits played at the end of JTBC’s Still Shining, I found myself sighing. I wasn’t sure I’d fully understood the writer’s intentions and goals, and I felt I needed time to process this fairly short 10-episode melancholic journey of romance and grief.

Then, the following day, as I read bell hooks’ All About Love: New Visions, I stumbled upon the following quote:

Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment. As John Welwood reminds us in Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love, “dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of love – which is to transform us.”

I couldn’t help but associate that idea of “genuine love” with what the protagonists of Still Shining experienced. In the end, was Still Shining really a story about love — or about obsession? Were the protagonists transformed by their bond — or were they hoping their romance could save them from their ghosts?

Directed by Kim Yoon-jin and written by Lee Sook-yun, Still Shining isn’t exactly a melodrama, but it isn’t a romantic drama either. Its narrative wavers between the two genres as it portrays the encounter, separation, and reunion between star-crossed lovers Yeon Tae-seo (a flawless Park Jin-young) and Mo Eun-a (a confident Kim Min-ju).

Be warned: This review contains spoilers! If you haven’t watched the show yet, why don’t you save this review for later by pinning our spoiler-free summary? It’s at the bottom!

The Shining Days of Youth

We first meet Tae-seo in the sweltering summer of 2014. Details are sparse, but we soon understand that Tae-seo is a high school senior who has just transferred to the quiet coastal village of Yeonwoo with his younger brother, Hui-seo (Sung Yoo-bin), to live with their grandparents. Tae-seo and Hui-seo recently lost their parents in a car accident, which also left Hui-seo, who dreamt of becoming a football player, with permanent damage to his leg.

Tae-seo is a heartbroken teenager whose grief is manifested through a seemingly timid, slightly aloof attitude towards his new surroundings. Soon after moving into his grandparents’ home, he signs up for the local high school, which is facing impending closure. That’s when Tae-seo learns of the existence (or so we’re led to believe) of a “Mo Eun-a”, the last student to transfer to the school five years ago.

Once he makes his way to the library to grab some hand-me-down uniforms, Tae-seo and Eun-a exchange glances in silence. There’s a dreamy quality to this sequence — a warm palette and soft lighting — that sets the tone for their entire adolescent period together.

Tae-seo wants to spend the rest of the summer break studying, because his goal is to be admitted to a renowned university in Seoul. That’s why he makes his way to school the following morning. When he can’t make his classroom fan work, Eun-a invites him to the library with its big windows and perfectly working fans.

Eun-a is also a senior who has been doing “independent study” over the summer. Abandoned by her mother, Eun-a transferred to Yeonwoo with her father, who owns a guesthouse. Eun-a’s father has been battling depression for quite a while and, after a suicide attempt, Eun-a found herself in the role of his carer. That’s why she can’t have the same big city dreams as Tae-seo’s. She feels the need to stay local to keep an eye on her beloved father.

Despite her own fears and sorrows, Eun-a is cheerful and chatty, welcoming Tae-seo into her reality almost as a matter of course. Day after day, we see them grow closer together, share their pains and dreams, and embolden each other to face the unknown, daunting future that awaits them. These are two wounded teenagers who find in one another the kind of acceptance and understanding they couldn’t get from the adults around them.

Still Shining as a Serene Coming-of-Age Drama

During its first two to three hours, Still Shining feels like a coming-of-age drama, a raw diary of Eun-a and Tae-seo’s final high school and early university days. They are serene, sweet, and innocent, lulling us into a comfortable rhythm. The inevitable romance that blossoms between them seems at once magical and mundane. Before long, Tae-seo and Eun-a have to understand how to foster their bond despite the distance that pulls them apart and the varying commitments that come with adulthood.

Their immediate conflicts are prosaic, natural and perfectly manageable. But slowly, their timing becomes ever more dissonant. It’s like Tae-seo and Eun-a were dancing together to a song only the two of them could hear, but adulthood made them forget the right steps. Their relationship loses its innocence and becomes strangely enslaving. They have to see each other constantly, otherwise… It’s like they can’t live without the other, which makes us realise that their romance wasn’t so much about caring and appreciating the other person as who they are, but about the temporary relief and distraction they offered each other from their own personal ghosts.

Soon, Tae-seo is juggling his university, a tutoring job, his ageing grandparents, his younger brother, and constant trips to the coast to see Eun-a. Meanwhile, Eun-a gives up on university and decides to take on a job at a hotel. She moves out, seeking independence from her father, who will marry Korean-Hawaiian journalist Park So-hyeon (Kim Ji-hyun). Their bond becomes unbalanced with Tae-seo doing much of the heavy lifting to synchronise their different routines. But it’s Eun-a who gets tired of the hard work required by a long-distance relationship, so she decides to break up with Tae-seo over the phone.

The break-up makes Tae-seo even more apathetic than he used to be (“Without you, I lose interest in myself“) while Eun-a — we later learn — spends quite some time unable to accept the separation she herself asked for.

We’re spared the next decade of their lives when the series takes us to 2025 in its fourth episode. Tae-seo is now a subway conductor in Seoul. Eun-a went through several ups and downs over the last ten years, and she’s now trying to find herself again in Seoul. When fate brings them together again, will they be able to rekindle their relationship?

The Vicious Cycle of Searching for a Spark That Is No More

The remaining seven episodes of Still Shining lose the sparkle of its initial instalments because its protagonists aren’t allowed to truly face and overcome their internal conflicts. Consequently, they are unable to engage in any genuine, three-dimensional relationship. The series then becomes a sorrowful portrayal of an awfully toxic romance in which neither side really knows who they are or what they want as individuals — and they don’t make any effort to figure that out because their relationship becomes the be-all and end-all of their existences.

The resilient mirth that marked young Tae-seo and Eun-a gives room to two adults who are often moody, grumpy, and standoffish. The cinematography follows this shift: the colours become darker, the shadows become harder, and melancholic shades of blue tint most compositions. As 30-year-olds, they have hit-or-miss communication skills and maturity, and their journey to the show’s finale becomes an unhealthy, vicious cycle that doesn’t really take them anywhere.

Still Shining then relies on repetitive conflicts that often feel forced and motivations that seem too fickle, considering their backstory. It’s the same misunderstandings over and over again. Instead of unravelling organically, the narrative wants to explore its protagonists’ melancholy for the sake of the melancholy, without a clear goal in mind. It’s like nothing else matters but each other, which leads to a reunion that starts with delight, but slowly devolves into a controlling bond of possessiveness, lack of trust, and self-centredness.

Even though they are often given alternatives, they make hasty and indifferent decisions, justifying them as “their only choice”. The protagonists of Still Shining are encouraged to victimise themselves and catastrophise their lives, never fully acknowledging the support and affection they receive from the people who have always surrounded them.

Tae-seo and Eun-a are denied the opportunity to learn that coordinating what you want, what you need, and what you ought to do is a natural part of growing up. They never come to understand that it’s healthy to let go and move on. They never develop any sense of self-love or self-awareness.

These self-made star-crossed lovers never learn what romantic love should truly be like: how it thrives from mutual care, commitment, and compromise. Instead, they hold on to a fantasy, an obsession, and a dangerous need for exhaustive devotion, which will magically fill the emptiness that haunts them — or so they believe.

What about Eun-a’s feelings of abandonment because of her mother, the eventual death of her father and the resulting guilt from her loss? And Tae-seo’s relationship with his family, his grief over his parents (and his brother’s dream, perhaps?) and the sense that he’s been imposed a cloak of responsibility that he didn’t really want to accept? Eun-a and Tae-seo’s loneliness, anguish, and anxiety simply exist, but are never effectively tackled. They are never allowed to mourn the carefree teenagers their fate stopped them from becoming, and they never engage in any sort of introspection.

The resulting narrative cannot possibly be described as “realistic” nor completely “melodramatic”, just frustrating, pessimistic, and disjointed. That’s not only due to the choice of topic, but also due to how the narrative was structured. Facts from a decade ago (or even before) come to the surface only to be forgotten soon after. Events are shared in small drops of information that don’t always connect or aren’t given the payoff needed.

Most importantly, Tae-seo and Eun-a’s romantic relationship becomes so all-consuming that supporting characters end up as mere plot devices. Tae-seo’s family gives Still Shining a whole lot of warmth, but they go underused. Hui-seo’s lost dreams and reality, their grandparents’ own grief, and their dedication to raising these two boys become fluff, without an active role in the overall narrative. We are given flashes of the brotherhood Still Shining could’ve explored between Tae-seo and Hui-seo, glimmers of a marvellous dynamic that never truly comes to be.

Eun-a’s senior at work, the charming Bae Seong-chan (an extraordinary Shin Jae-ha), becomes a cardboard cut-out of a second male lead — his own personality moulded to serve the love triangle required. The same happens to the lovely Im A-sol (Park Se-hyun), whose unwavering kindness goes unnoticed.

The last episode spends an hour on a quest for the perfect farewell: they say goodbye a thousand times before deciding not to really let go of each other, which makes for a quite exasperating watch. Tae-seo and Eun-a reach the end of their story as slightly different individuals, whose changes are so shallow that they feel negligible.

Should You Watch Still Shining?

Instead of the transformative power of love, Still Shining chooses to be an exploration of volatile relationships. Even though its narrative lacks a bit of nuance in the examination of such a complex dynamic, this is a story that successfully conveys the missteps, gloominess, and poignancy that mark this kind of connection.

Through dazzling photography that lends the show a nostalgic tone and features some of the year’s most artistic compositions, Still Shining is absolutely stunning to look at. With the entire cast delivering powerful performances, this can be a compelling series — if (and only if) you’re in the right mood for it. This isn’t the healing drama it was originally advertised to be, but a slow-paced and troubled romance that embraces the discomfort and willingly allows it to deepen rather than conquering it.

Perhaps what Still Shining wants to say is that some moments in our lives will indeed shine forever in our hearts — but that doesn’t mean that we need to hold on to them eternally. Maybe Tae-seo and Eun-a’s bond would shine even brighter if only they learned to let it go, because right now, their spark is nothing but a memory.

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