Normal People
NORMAL PEOPLE - HULU/BBCUpon first glance, it is easy to dismiss BBC’s new show Normal People as some kind of frivolous, archetypal teenage soap opera for the millennials. Rest assured, it is not. This adaptation of Sally Rooney’s eponymous love story is a confident and uncompromising piece of work that tells a tale of young love stripped to its bare bones without the filters of nostalgia or sugar-coating sentimentality.
The miniseries focuses on the romantic escapades of two friends, Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal), who perpetually find themselves slipping in and out of each other’s lives through high school and university. Marianne is an extremely smart although somewhat of a social pariah who’s not very well-liked by her peers. Connell, on the other hand, is a popular, handsome and sensitive young man whose mother, Lorraine, works as a cleaner for Marianne’s wealthy family. Their love blossoms after Connell comes to Marianne’s family home to pick up his mother. The friction that exists between social mores and romantic desires is most discernable when Connell truly displays his affection towards Marianne. The only time he’s fully devoted to her is when they’re alone in their most private spaces. It’s clear that he loves her but never dares to make their relationship public for fear of what other people at school might think of him. The relationship that emerges from there onwards is more complicated than first appears, as the story follows them through the years at Trinity College Dublin. From the bliss of their first kiss to the brutality of betrayal, Normal People paints a portrait of adolescent love so vividly it can sometimes be uncomfortable to watch. The pain and passion of true love all intertwine and percolate beautifully, with a sense of longing so intense that it manages to immerse viewers into the lyrical quietude of the frame.
The directors, Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald, capture the mood and spirit of the source material extremely well, especially in how they control the space around each character, given the overwhelming sense of displacement and detachment that seems to dissociate them from reality. While the novel closely examines what’s happening in the characters’ minds, the cameras certainly do their job in exposing their thoughts and emotions from inside out by focusing on tiny gestures communicated through their eyes and body movements. Not every feeling is spoken of much, but it is clearly visible in every scene. The show’s writers, Alice Birch and Sally Rooney herself, have done an impeccable job at seizing the essential qualities of the novel and translating them to the small screen with such precision that everything that materializes onscreen feels painfully true. By alternating between the perspectives of Connell and Marianne, the show invites the viewer to inhabit the darkest corners of their psyches. For those who connect with the pain and turmoil that these characters go through, the effect is heart-wrenching, maybe borderline agonizing.
Moreover, the show is able to retain the sexual candour of the novel thanks to Ita O‘ Brien, the intimacy coordinator. Sex, as portrayed here, is not just a mere physical act; the act is a character in itself that drives the narrative forward, serving as an emotional anchor when words can no longer hold their power. The intimate scenes feel incredibly real in all their awkward moments and not at all gratuitous. There is this astonishing rawness in the way the bodies inelegantly collide and open themselves to each other, which demonstrates how love can physically be healing or destructive – or both.
It is true that people often say that the success of an adaptation will always rely on the actors, as they hold the power that either makes or breaks it. Normal People works not only because of its subtle direction or lacerating writing, but because of the central performances and chemistry between its two leads. Daisy Edgar-Jones (Marianne) and Paul Mescal (Connell) are able to bring such an intense vulnerability to their characters and deftly hide it underneath their seemingly calm, steely veneers that are constantly on the verge of cracking. The supporting players around Edgar-Jones and Mescal are great, too, although they do, at times, feel as though they weren’t given enough material to work with. Thus, to a certain degree, it does feel like they serve no other purpose than being a backdrop for our protagonists.
In the end, Normal People essentially comes down to the idea that you will forever feel unloved by others because of your insecurities – that you will never be enough for the people you love. It’s all about the responsibility and individual choice, the reconcilable/irreconcilable nature of love and personalities and the unpredictable forces that bring people together only to split them apart. Normal People holds an insurmountable power that will surely leave the audience reeling as soon as the end credits start flashing.