Get the latest gossip
Pachinko Has Mastered the Game
Winning, losing — who cares? What, asks season two, does that have to do with living?
Creator and showrunner Soo Hugh’sadaptation of Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel is a television show that revels — luxuriates, even — in conveying the passage of time, and takes the care to craft, through cinematography and production design, illuminating details that help us understand how the world changes around us. It’s now 1945, and Japan is firmly entrenched in World War II, with radio broadcasts parroting imperialist propaganda and the yakuza — like Koh Hansu (Lee Minho), Sunja’s former lover and the secret father of her elder son Noa — growing ever richer and more powerful from their grip on the black markets. But the two actors convey such familiarity between their characters that every discussion, whether it’s an argument or an admission of feeling, is magnetic, as impossible to look away from as the season’s exceptional imagery: a train’s headlight glowing red in the pitch-black night, a group of women planting rice in a parallel line, and a devastating black-and-white short film set in the factory where Yoseb works.
Or read this on VULTURE