Thread by @manggaetteok96

Thread about junzhe’s amazing 眼神戏 (gaze acting?) bc with every rewatch of SHL, i just get more and more appreciative of it

(honestly, you can pretty much just throw it under the whole “acting” umbrella so you could also take this thread as me 🌈 farting junzhe’s acting 😌)

so what exactly is 眼神戏? it’s basically when a simple gaze is all you need to understand the emotions of the character, without needing any words

for example: here, without saying anything and with his measuring gaze alone, you can tell that wkx is intrigued by zzs

why is it so important??

眼神戏 is a weird little thing where if the actors excel at it, it takes their acting to a whole new level and the viewing experience is immersive (for us) but if they dont, we, as viewers, have a hard time buying the emotions or getting into it

but no fear with junzhe bc they happen to be excellent at it! (and probably these gazes are a main reason we’re still on this 🏔)

starting off with gj, he has the advantage with his puppy eyes where whenever he looks at zzs as wkx, his gaze just drips honey

but he doesn’t just have that one type of loving gaze where he looks like he wants to consume zzs, no

if you compare the previous look to this one from ep 25, you can see that both are love, but ep 25 is lot softer and his conflicted state at the time is reflected in his gaze

if you contrast the way he looks at zzs with the way he looks at his subordinates, it becomes even more apparent (how he flips between wkx cold and untouchable side, and his unpredictable bouts of insanity)

even when he smiles, his eyes are hard as steel

you can also make the comparison with the way he looks a cwn

he didn’t say a single word at the start of this exchange but just from his gaze alone, you can sense his disdain and dislike towards the person he perceives is trying to steal his little sister/daughter away

now onto zzh!

this man did not become the nation’s laopo for nothing, he fully leveraged his acting experience to bring out zzs’s softness, warmth and delicateness

with just a side-eye or furrowed eyebrow, he makes us GET zzs’s little moments of playfulness or pettiness

and just like gj, the way he stares at wkx as zzs just spells so much love and fondness, it’s literally making him softer

this is why people always say “SHL did not speak of a single word of ‘love’ between wenzhou but everything between them can be nothing but love”

ep 33 was just a fkn masterpiece, a true testament of zzh as an actor

he barely spoke in the ep but he didn’t need to bc his gaze said everything you need to know

from his disbelief at wkx being alive, to his anger at the deceit, to his forgiveness, it’s all there, clear as day

ep 34 was just as amazing, zzh used his eyes alone to convey all the regrets he felt towards his situation (note how when wkx hugged him, zzs didn’t look down, almost as if he couldn’t bear to) but even then, his eyes still held so much love when he did look at lao wen

also people criticized his acting in ep 1 bc they said he was too frozen… just take a look at his various zzs’s, from his relaxed carefree attitude at first, to his youthful hope of changing the world, to his emotionless state, to his anger towards the man who took everything

(fuck i love zzh. and gj. and the two of them. oh my god i cant)

now, let’s get into how their 眼神戏 literally explodes in potency and chemistry when put TOGETHER

((posting the thread now so that you guys can start reading while i continue working on the rest))

you cant talk about junzhe 眼神戏 without talking about whatever happened in ep 8 bc oh my god

i won’t talk about the way wkx looked at zzs (see 1st screenshot) but instead, just by shifting his eyes and avoiding eye contact, zzh is able to show zzs’s bashfulness at the question

from ep 7, when zzs said “just what kind of relationship are we in for me to pay your bill?”, he has the tiniest smile playing on his lips like you can’t convince me he isn’t flirting

meanwhile, wkx’s expression says all you need to know about what he thinks (“really a-xu?”)

jumping to ep 14 and straight into a pit of knives, we only feel knived because their acting is on point

wkx is smiling in P1 but is he really happy? it’s more self-deprecating than anything else

and P2, he just looks so… lost. so empty, like he really just lost everything.

meanwhile, zzs goes through much more of rollercoaster of emotions

although his tears are swimming in his eyes, we don’t just get “sad”: we also get tired acceptance and anger that’s laced with so much sadness

they are both just hurting so much here

you can’t talk about SHL without talking about ep 27 so here it is (im using the bts bc i can):

note how zzs is looking at wkx in both but it’s so obvious how different the emotions are

P1 is serious and deliberating while P2 is almost playful, a hint of teasing

im tired of saying it but gj’s expressions in this scene are so good…

wkx’s surprise when zzs defended him, his disbelief when zzs chose to die with him followed by his smile (he accepted zzs’s feelings, he validated them), his relief when yby let him off… fuck.

bc this thread can go on and on for literally every single ep (and i will likely add to this thread later) but I think you’re all starting to get the point, im going to conclude with ep 36 since we clearly haven’t been knived enough yet 😌

ive heard that it’s actually quite common for actors nowadays to take a break if they partner is filming close-up shots since they won’t be in the shot anyways

but gj has said in their bazaar interview that he acted in every scene with zzh so think about that in terms of ep 36

that means that for this scene, even though we don’t see it in the close-ups, they were looking at each other as their expressions changed from love to pain and regret, from shock and confusion to absolute despair

they brought that out of each other

not a single word was exchanged (except maybe the unspoken 爱你) but they don’t need to for us to understand

that’s the extent of how amazing junzhe’s 眼神戏 is, they really breathed life and depth into wenzhou with every single one of their expressions