The Transformative Young Love Entanglement in Normal People

Young people also experience real things — like love — and employ it as a lead to discover their true beings.

Young love is a merely short-term fling that will be soon forgotten and replaced by the lasting one.

Some people might still cherish their first love and hang it in a sparkly memory lane, no matter how painful or foolish the experience was. Meanwhile, most people these days more likely to deem that kind of behavior as something wasted.

It reflects on how the trope of modern love story is more favoring on the concept of freedom to love, or in elegant way to phrase it that love is limitless. Everyone can love every single human being, without aggree to be submissive in a monogamous liaison.

Needless to say, it’s clearly hard to apprehend if anyone in this milieu still believes in the idea of a soulmate.

First love, true romance, the right person who meant to be with you, these belong to the classic fairy tale and represent the concept of love in the imperialism era, like the elements that appear most in Jane Austen’s novels. And these are pretty much what Normal People offers in thirty minutes, in each twelve episodes. All the materials of the story derive from the best seller book written by Sally Rooney, a promising young author who considered as the new voice of millennials.

The story apparently seems dull, obsolete, and amply naive even in the basic groundwork of the common teenage-romance shows in Netflix. However, over the course the central love story expanded, the show has transformed those cliche romantic components to become the essential subject matters.

It intrudes on the notion that the classic young love narrative remains to be relevant, and it needs to be included in the liberation concept of the modern love story.

Normal People explores the dynamic relationship between a young couple, Marianne and Connell, who’s growing up in a small island, Siglo, in Ireland. Their romantic journey starts with an intricate power dynamic when they begin secretly dating in high school.

The reason why they need to spend time together in secrecy is related to their social status.

Marianne is considered as an obnoxious sociopath at school because of her harsh-spoken attitude. She is the kind of person treated as a punching bag by the popular clique at school only to make fun around.

Accidentally, Connell is the most decent member of that gang. He finds it could be a little bit confusing if his friends know they are together, so it’s better for them to stay as private as possible.

Outside of the school, the parable shifts into the Romeo and Juliet’s class conflict, the couple is very aware of the fact that Connell’s mother works at the big mansion Marianne’s family lives in.

The secretive affair would later plant a huge heart-aching wound for both of them.

As they get older, they still recalibrate the value of their romantic and platonic relationship in multiple different chances. They are the couple that becomes easily disconnected in terms of proximity, but their relationship never lets loose in the cause of emotional connection.

Most of the time, following the journey of this typical connected-disconnected couple will be easy to cause an experience of emotional fatigue.

But the issue of coupling in here is not necessarily evolving around the misunderstanding romance. Normal People actually provides a wide range of coming of age related conflicts. In each takes, Marianne and Connell can remain being seen as an individual who is sustainedly figuring out about themselves, not only just a couple who is unclear with their feelings to each other.

When they get into college, the show solidly highlights a dramatic power shift of their social status. An outspoken and charming person like Marianne is certainly the one who will shine and take over the whole stages in university. Meanwhile, a reserved and wistful one like Connell prefers to reside in his alienated world.

Before that, the first period of the show lingers on the hide-and-seek couple for a while. They’re drawn to each other by exchanging the difference process to react on their thoughts, and through engaging in the intimate sexual relationship.

The show spends half of their journey as a young couple in many dwelling close-up shots that brings all the depths and pathos from the two characters. And half of the rest, the relationship of this couple is captured in the slow-burned and explicit sex scenes.

It’s a different kind of deliberate sex scene — which sometimes flounders as the actors get more naked, their bodies become more rigid to find comfort in each other. In spite of its sensuality, it’s not an erotic sexual composure either, albeit you can practically say so. But it’s close to what Connell views about their sexual experience: sex where real feelings are involved.

The sex scene plays substantial parts in building the romantic narrative. It is because the ultimate key feature of Normal People, that cannot be failed by the viewers, is whether or not the viewers understand the reason why this couple keeps coming back to each other.

The love is pretty much up there, but what’s else? In the book, that task might become easier as the readers having full access through the characters’ inner thoughts.

But to excel in visual comprehension is a different kind of skill with another difficulty. The viewers need a reliable guideline from a divine cinematic style that enables to translate the real emotions involve in the texts.

In Normal People, the sex scene cautiously showcases how to access the utmost internal and intimate feelings of the two characters. It functions in developing both the physical and emotional connection that ensues in a mutual, equally involved relationship. The sex scene is utilized as a pivotal narrative device to advance the viewer’s understanding of Marianne and Connell relationship.

In spite of that, there are some moments when the plot seems to be underdeveloped because it causes a sudden character interchange. In such an instant way, the show transforms the rhythm and ambiance forcing viewers to engage with the new phase of the story.

Nevertheless, the ending reveals that the show is actually disloyal to the main core of a classic love story. There is a rejection to the fairytale-ish, dramatic, and happily-ever-after closure.

I’m not considering this as an overtly spoiled explanation, but this betrayal needs to be amplified on the behalf of the narrative framework.

Choosing not to submit to the typical happy ending, while employing the story in the heart of classic romance trope is a compelling choice.

Although Marianne and Connell has confronted many turmoils throughout years of relationship, they yet need to face an uncertain future.

The ending could be the best way to conclude a story that is built based on realistic approach. It is indeed the perfect way to elucidate that the experience of love the young people feel are real and valid. And it does matter despite whoever they will become in the next phase of life.

This type of love story is actually not outdated, but it sets in an unexplored territory in the modern romance narrative, and that’s why it suppose to be told more often.