SUGA Road to D-Day Review: Starring the artistic alias of SUGA of BTS aka Agust D, this hour and 20 minutes long Korean documentary special has been produced by HYBE Media Studio and directed by Park Jun-soo. It has been released in tandem with his solo debut album titled D-Day that carries forth the chapters started by his former mixtapes Agust D and D-2.
The movie sees him sink into his vulnerable side as he struggles to find inspiration for his new musical project, and is often left feeling stuck in a slump. Travelling through numerous places in the world like Seoul, Tokyo and Las Vegas, he opens up about his traumatic memories that eventually feed into his heart-wrenching music pieces topping global music charts.
-SUGA Road to D-Day Review Does Not Contain Spoilers-
SUGA Road to D-Day Review: Discussion
Beginning abruptly, Road to D-Day maps out the journey undertaken by the BTS rapper, thereby taking on the shape of a Künstlerroman, a literary work that charts an artist’s growth to maturity. What starts with him having “nothing” to talk about, with no stories to tell, soon takes the shape of an entire album, i.e. D-Day, with grounded and heartening stories. As the title puts out vividly, this documentary special is all the artist finding inspiration to thread the strings of his musical release, the third part of a long-running series.
The movie shows Min Yoongi taking a journey within, as well as on the physical plane. While he heads out on a tour of various locations across the world to seek inspiration from several artists on the road, he equally looks within to make sense of the music he puts out for the rest of the world to consume. A plethora of his older songs have dealt with the concept of a split in one’s personality, dreams, anxiety, loneliness, and all such grave themes.
All those ideas find a firm ground to be vocalised in an open manner for the first time in this film. He breaks down the different stages of his musical journey with the alias Agust D, and not Suga of BTS, a divide he’s constantly laid emphasis on. The same musical journey that began with Agust D is relayed by him in the movie as well when he comes clean about his insecurities that led him to believe that he had no reason to be a member of BTS. It all comes full circle as he voices the same idea of liberating oneself from such negative thoughts in his latest solo debut album, marking personal development through it all.
Interestingly, the documentary has the same calming aura as his live broadcasts that the K-pop septet’s fans, ARMYs, often watch on Weverse. Call him Min Yoongi, Suga of BTS or the ferocious rapper Agust D, all of these sides to his personality and musical identity cumulate to make him the ‘People’s artist’. The movie goes on to delineate that he isn’t just releasing music to find a cathartic getaway for himself, rather its extended to all those people who dare to dream, much like how he started out in his early days.
In addition to meeting several musicians on his way like Steve Aoki, Halsey and others, all of whom have now become his friends through musical collaborations and other projects, he also performs some of his old songs, and those from his new official solo album with a live band. Therefore, the documentary is intrinsically stitched with the stories he’s illustrated in his album D-Day, and so the movie makes sure to interweave his musical narratives by default, further representing his condensed thoughts that find an outlet through music.
The documentary does a great job in reminding us that his emotionally charged songs are coming from somewhere, and that Suga knows well how to musically translate all of those experiences, memories and even traumas into a therapeutic means to live life with, not only for us, but for himself too. Certain camera techniques also appropriately capture and play around with the jarring idea of how time flies by as he charts out a race against it while feeling stuck and not being able to fit the pieces of his musical story together seamlessly.
Final thoughts
Most importantly, this documentary draws a stark contrast with J-hope in the Box. The latter marks the palpable presence of other BTS members in the background a lot more, which I came to realise even more so after watching Suga’s documentary. Herein, they’re barely present, and the narrative surrounds Suga’s journey alone, which takes on a lot more personal meaning and shade than we might gather.
Suga dissects the meanings of a lot of his songs through this special premiere while also revealing an inner side to his thoughts and reality that has never been reflected before in any of the group’s content despite them being surrounded by cameras all the time. As mentioned earlier, the story begins in the middle of nowhere, which could easily take aback new audiences who’re not familiar with the singer. ARMYs will find a consoling warmth through this documentary, but that’s not to say that newcomers will feel alienated.
The insightful artist leaves us with many soulful lessons to ponder over, and his soliloquy through it all will leave you deep in thought about various ideas and themes of life. One of the most reiterated ideas out of them being how we have an entire world of information at our feet and yet we’ve allowed it to debilitate and stop us from acting on our imagination and thoughts.
SUGA: Road to D-Day is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
Also read: Agust D’s D-Day Album Review: Raise Your Hands Up, BTS’ Suga Nailed It Again!