[ Spoiler Alert: If you have yet to watch the drama mentioned in the following review, please proceed at your own risk :P ]
The series is a combination of courtroom drama and romantic comedy with elements of fantasy. After overcoming poverty and a difficult childhood, Jang Hye-sung becomes a lawyer, specifically a public defender, but she is pragmatic, self-preserving and jaded. Her life changes when she encounters Park Soo-ha, a high school boy with the supernatural ability to read other people's thoughts by looking into their eyes, and cop-turned-lawyer Cha Gwan-woo who is cheerful and idealistic, though a bit of a dork. Soo-ha gained his mind-reading ability after witnessing his father getting murdered ten years ago. His father's death had initially been dismissed as a car accident until Hye-sung, then a high school girl, gave decisive testimony in court despite the killer's threats, and Soo-ha has been searching for her ever since. As Hye-sung works with Soo-ha and Gwan-woo, she gradually lets go of her pursuit of money and glory. Together, this unlikely team use unconventional methods on their cases, proving that while sometimes justice is blind to a fault, she can still hear your voice. — Wikipedia
This is one of the rare Korean dramas that combine good writing and strong acting. What appeared to be boring first few episodes actually build a firm foundation on which the story later develops beautifully. It has a "tight" plot in which the details are laid out piece by piece, and later linked into a coherent picture. Some parts of the story are really predictable, others less so. What caught me by surprise was Soo-ha's desire to protect Hye-sung blossomed into love and then that love was reciprocated! Another unexpected one was Soo-ha actually lost his memory (retrograde amnesia). The case of the twin offenders was an excellent appetiser on motivation behind revenge. This was then followed up with the knotty relationship between Soo-ha, Hye-sung and the murderer of their parents.
There were, of course, some questions that plagued me as I watched the drama. Why did the same judges, public prosecutors and public defendants appear every time? Couldn't Hye-sung have contacted Soo-ha using his other newly bought cell phone? (And by the way, where did that other cell phone went? Missing? Resold?) Why did Soo-ha write so few diary entries for the past decade or so? In light of how tight the plot is and the pace of the story, however, these questions are quite redundant.
The lawsuits and cases presented in the drama were quite unorthodox, possibly chosen to illustrate just how complex law is - how do you interpret it? Even defining justice is difficult - do you follow the letter of the law or capture the spirit of the law? Try as you might to be wholly objective, inevitably you would want to see not just the rational side of the case but the emotional side as well. Being too objective might make you miss some key factors while you're considering the case at hand, whereas being too emotional might make you over-identify with your clients and plunge you into mistakes. A balance between the two is ideally sought (this much was conveyed in the drama).
The drama is laden with two major themes of resilience and forgiveness. In psychology, resilience refers to our innate ability to use everyday strengths to surmount life challenges such as natural disasters, catastrophes, family dysfunctions and personal crises. The fact that Soo-ha has turned out well in spite of the tragic loss of his parents, isolation and loneliness is a prime example of resilience. Forgiveness could be defined as a cancelling of debt incurred by another person (the offender) even though he or she does not deserve it. To truly forgive, you not only look past the offences but also relinquish your desires of retribution or revenge. Our main characters Hye-sung and Soo-ha were tested on this front many times and Hye-sung repeatedly stressed to Soo-ha the importance of not succumbing to the motivation to avenge, mirroring the last words imparted by Hye-sung's mother:
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - if we live by that, then there will be no one left in this world. People who treated you badly did so out of jealousy and envy of your good fortune. Don't hate them; instead, pity them, feel sorry for them.
Parenting could be a sub-theme of the drama. What kind of family you were born into does not matter as much as parenting. Although Hye-sung was raised by a single parent and given much "tough love", her mother believed in her and brought her up well. Contrast that with Hye-sung's long-time rival Do-yeon whose foster parents did not cater to her spiritual/moral development. Although Do-yeon was well-educated, fairly rich and had a stable career, she often made morally ambiguous or even downright morally wrong decisions.
I like the flow of the drama: each part segued neatly to the next. The emotions invoked by the scenes were not overdone and there were appropriate pauses in between for the audience to "recover". The reminiscences about Soo-ha's childhood were admittedly touching to the point of inducing tears. Other flashbacks were more intrusive, like the scene where Hye-sung's mother gave her last advice was repeated too many times in too short a period.
In terms of character development, the main leads were complex enough with many-layered personality (even the villain is not really a villain by choice). Hye-sung grew from a cheerful, reckless and lazy lawyer into a creative, self-sufficient and responsible public defendant. She became more interested and invested in social justice. Soo-ha was originally lonely and had this mask of careless indifference towards other people, but when he found the noona who testified at the trial of his father's murderer, Soo-ha's purpose in life became protecting his saviour from harm. Soo-ha learned to be honest and accountable for his own actions, telling Hye-sung truths even though they were painful.
It is notable that the drama was extended by two episodes. The original ending at the end of episode 16 was too abrupt. I think it may have something to do with people not being receptive to the idea of the main leads with such a large age gap actually fell in love and cared for each other. The additional episodes better explained, in a rather Sherlockian manner (I refer to the recent BBC version, of course), what happened to the kidnapping of Hye-sung. Nonetheless, Hye-sung worried that some day she would part with Soo-Ha. Maybe the writer still tried not to put an optimistic, happily-ever-after ending to a "socially taboo" love.
Some stray observations:
- Public transport was very much used in the drama, portraying the life of middle- to lower-income Koreans. This was rarely found in other mainstream Korean dramas (I couldn't speak for indie ones), which normally would include expensive garments, fancy cars and exotic locales. The fanciest place in "I Can Hear Your Voice" would probably be the cafe.
- Symmetry could be found throughout the drama. Take for example the discussion on revenge/forgiveness: the murderer's story was contrasted with Soo-ha's. Another example would be Hye-sung and Soo-ha wearing clothes (at home) that often complemented each other in terms of colour and style.
- The scene where Soo-ha fell into Hye-sung's lap on the bus was just extremely odd. As weird as the scene in "The Heirs" where the character Young-do was told to put his phone away and his eyebrows down. Both scenes did not match the mood or the flow of the dramas.
p.s. Recently I started using Goodreads to keep track of the books I read. There's this function of scoring system, a 5 star scale that can be used to rate how good a particular book is. People have different criteria for scoring of course, but for me, 5 stars means "it's so good that it is worth a re-read".
p.p.s. "I Can Hear Your Voice" is definitely worth 5 stars.
