Fargo, Season 2: Delving deeper into the darkness

To surpass the first season of Fargo in terms of quality would be difficult.  It was phenomenal.
However, season 2 continues in the tradition of brilliance.

Taking place in 1979 this time (season 1 was in 2006), the show has a chance to dazzle in the area of period detail.  It doesn’t fail there.  Unlike most shows that continue in chronology, Fargo zips back 27 years, but there is a connection to the first season.  Characters from the first season reappear here under the guise of different actors.   Lou Solverson, played in the first season by Keith Carradine as an elderly, diner-owning father of grown-up Deputy Molly, is here played as a young Minnesota State Trooper by Patrick Wilson.

Once again, we deal in this season with murder and depravity.  There is a multiple homicide in a Waffle Diner and the assailant is run-over by a distracted driver, hair dresser Peggy Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst).  She arrives home with the victim still on her windshield, suspecting he is dead.  He isn’t, and when her husband, butcher Ed (Jesse Plemons) arrives home, he resorts to finishing what his wife inadvertently started by killing him in a moment of desperation and confusion.

All these events are only the beginning.  The victim of the Blumquists is Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin) of a local crime family.  Revenge is sought, more violent acts follow, an investigation is launched by authorities, and there is a UFO.

I don’t mean to downplay the impact and intensity of the second season of Fargo by my brief, curt description of it.  It, like the preceding season, is engaging and suspenseful.  It contains some truly memorable and funny characters.  It contains the same sly sense of humour as both the first season and the film on which it is based.

Like the first season’s Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), there is one character that really stands out as truly sinister and seemingly invincible.    That is Hanzee Dent (Zahn McClarnon), a Native American loyal to the Gerhardt family with a mysterious, silent aura, who along with a host of other characters, racks up an extensive body count.  He is my personal favourite character from this season.  He is deadly and vicious, but by the season’s end, he has grown on the viewer and is strangely sympathetic. That is the strength and wonder of the series:  the ability to develop characters that are at once repellent and admirable.

There are some interesting visual motifs that set this season apart from the first as well.  There is an extensive use of split screen imagery, which offers a unique stylistic appeal to this season.  It is a technique used, not gratuitously, but to give the viewer increased knowledge and perspective.

The Minnesota locale is once again used effectively as the setting.  The frigid, desolate and snow-drifted exteriors lend a sense of isolation and lack of empathy towards its inhabitants.  This season is gorgeously shot, as well.

There is a heart-felt, familial passion at the centre of this season.  Lou Solverson and family (wife and daughter) are frequently depicted in their home life.  They are dealing with the cancer of Betsy (Cristin Milioti), which will eventually leave young daughter, Molly motherless.  Ted Danson plays Betsy’s father, Sheriff Hank Larsson.  His character offers a central pillar around which Lou and his young family can stand in his frequent visits and presence in the Solverson household.

Overall, Season 2 of Fargo is a gem.  It maintains the tall stature established by the first season and develops the series in an interesting and welcome direction.  Can the series maintain its wit, surprise and intelligence in upcoming seasons?  Only time will tell.

Fargo, Season 1: An enthralling spin-off

Netflix Canada recently released the first two seasons of Fargo, the television series based on the 1996 Coen Brothers film.  I’d like to write about the first season now.  

First of all, the spirit of the original film is here:  the intrigue, the suspense, the droll, dark humour.  I will further proclaim that this series happens to be one of the greatest television series of all time.  It contains unforgettable characters, spellbinding turns of events, and intricate, tightly written dialogue and plot twists. 

Like the original film, the first season proclaims that these are “true events,” but as we now know, that’s just a cunning deception of the film and it’s spin-off.  The first season takes place in 2006.  An ominous drifter has arrived in Bimidji, Minnesota.  He is played by Billy Bob Thornton in one of the most sinister, scary performances to ever grace the small screen.  His Lorne Malvo is a highly original character and is utterly horrific in his violent actions throughout the first season.  He almost seems super-human or extra-terrestrial in his ability to think, plan and execute.  The character recalls other Coen brothers’ villains, most notably Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men, an almost other-worldly individual in his omnipresence and chilling lack of humanity. 

When Malvo meets Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) a local insurance salesman, he learns of Nygaard’s disdain for a local bully and decides to take on the responsibility of rubbing him out, despite Nygaard’s lack of consent.   This leads to a series of violent crimes and murders that will baffle and bewilder local law enforcement officers, including Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tollman) and officer Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks). 

Freeman’s performances of Nygaard recalls Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) from the original Fargo film.  Freeman seems to be doing an impersonation of the original character, but he adds his own riffs and spins on him.  He has the same meek, passive temperament, but he also has a darker side than Jerry and ultimately reveals himself to be a man who will go to any lengths to put himself ahead, including lying, and acts of adultery and violence.  

Fargo is a black comedy like the film on which it is based.  It’s humour is constantly mixed with suspense and terror.  This aspect of the show is where it really shines:  it takes you on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and reactions.  The violence, when it does occur is graphic and sudden, and there is a lot of it.  A lot of innocent people are mowed down.  

I am almost through the second season and will write on it too.  As I said, this is one of the great television series.  It constantly surprises, amuses, and leaves you riveted to the small screen.  It captures the soul and spirit of the original film and moves it in new directions and unexpected angles.  

Netflix's Ozark, Season 1: Dark, Surprising and Suspenseful

If you have some spare time in your days or evenings and are looking for a series to watch on Netflix, I would suggest a new one, Ozark.  

The Ozark of the title is the Ozark of Missouri in a resort community where the main protagonist family, The Byrdes, moves.  They move from a suburb of Chicago in an attempt to evade the threatening reach of a dangerous Mexican drug lord for whom the patriarch of the family, financial advisor Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), was laundering money. 

The threat, however, follows them and the family, consisting of father, Marty, wife, Wendy (Laura Linney) and two children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are constantly on the precipice of omnipresent danger and suspense. 

Marty must somehow pay a debt to the drug-lord and he starts to initiate new money-laundering schemes to appease the man in question. 

There are some great characters in Ozark.  Besides the Byrdes, there is the Langmore family, a trailer-living bunch of rednecks including young teen, Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner), a fierce, independent-minded young woman who steals the show at times and is a great character to watch.

There is the constant breath of the FBI down Marty’s neck, as he attempts to launder money secretly and in whatever way he can muster.  An FBI agent, Roy Petty, played by Jason Butler Harner, happens to be gay.  His obsessive surveillance of the Byrde family is juxtaposed with the relationship he initiates with an older member of the Langmore family.  It is a source of surprise in a series of many surprises in this first season.

And this is a riveting first season.  As mentioned, it constantly surprises you.  The way the elder Byrdes reveal their secrets to the children comes unexpectedly for what you are use to within the dynamics of typical parent-child relations.  Ruth Langmore takes on the management of a local strip joint in a way that provokes admiration and surprise as well.

Bateman's performance is another surprise.  Typically playing comical roles in the past, he achieves something spectacular in this first season:  a mix of unwavering, momentous determinism with a fractured, damaged credulity.   

At the season’s end, you are left with questions as to what will happen next.  This is the purpose of any great series’ cliffhanging, but Ozarks achieves it on a masterful level.  Some characters don’t survive, others see a glimmer of hope in their horizon.  Regardless of who your like or dislike, what is certain is that you will return for the next season of Netflix’s Ozark. 

The Simmering Florida Heat of "Bloodline" (Season 3) [Spoilers]

Netflix’s “Bloodline” has returned for a third and final season, and like the two previous seasons it simmers with the hot, Florida Keys temperature, boiling over with intrigue, duplicity and a noirish delving into the depths of humanity’s despair. 

The Rayburns are a family dealing with a lot of skeletons in their closet.  The influence of Danny Rayburn’s (Ben Mendelsohn) actions in the past as well as those of brothers John (Kyle Chandler), Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz), sister Meg (Linda Cardellini), and mother Sally (Sissy Spacek), are constantly being felt, adding an undeniable heaviness and moroseness to every present day situation.   

Danny isn’t present much in this most recent season (he’s dead), but his spectre hangs over everything and he occasionally appears as figments of certain characters’s imaginations and remembrances. 

John Rayburn is the established centre-piece and heart of the Rayburn family.  His murder of Danny weighs on his soul constantly and threatens to pull him under the riptide of lies and guilt.  Kevin, at the end of the second season, had brutally murdered Marco Diaz (Enrique Murciano), Meg’s boyfriend, but Kevin’s problems with drugs, alcohol, organized crime and self-delusion demonstrate that he doesn’t bear as much guilt for the consequences of his enormous transgressions.  This makes him an extremely unsympathetic character although the series does demonstrate sympathy for him in the development of his tenuous sobriety and the birth of a son. 

What I like about “Bloodline” in this third season is the way it continues to makes the Florida heat palpable.  The climate seems to be a character itself, threatening to engulf the characters’ grips on sanity.  Similarly, the Rayburn hotel is threatened by the rising waters of the Florida Keys coast.  Sally, by the season’s end, is hurriedly trying to sell the hotel to anyone who is sucker enough to purchase a piece of property that will, in ten years time, be submerged in water. 

The water in this series is a highly symbolic motif. It is a place where one of the Rayburn children (a girl) died at a young age from drowning.  It is a place where John nearly drowns himself in a later episode.  The water seems to represent an unknowable force of nature that not only threatens to engulf the Rayburn’s livelihood, but is also the only definite, constant thing in their lives, a place where death is palpable and tangible.  It is a locale where much of the actions of the past that haunt the present and future seem to be focused and meet. 

You are constantly wondering through this third season just how each member of the family will get out of the deep mire of shit that they find themselves in.  In the end, certain members evade a cruel fate while others become engrossed in the consequences of their past actions.  No clear cut resolution is offered in the last episode.  You are left with the proposal that John may be able to atone for his past sins via the confession to Danny’s son, Nolan (Owen Teague), of his involvement of the murder of his father, but the answer is not clear and the viewer is left hanging.  

Thanks to some great acting and interesting dynamics between characters and environment, the third and final season of “Bloodline” is a riveting, neo-noir paen to the twisted, dysfunctional and bruised psyche that characterizes a certain, but at the same time, universal family of the early 21st century. 

The Overlooked Ghostbuster

I have yet to see the 2016 remake of the 1984 Ghostbusters film.  I have reasons for this.  I do not
think it needed to be remade, for one.  The 1984 original is a comedic gem.  It had, what was then, revolutionary, scary special effects.  It was exciting and bold and extremely funny.

I'd like to take some time to focus on an overlooked Ghosbuster, a late-joiner, but an important, vital member of the crew: Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson).  The most spiritual memberof the team, the backbone  who looks at things with a more laid-back but realistic perspective.  He turned out, at the end of the first Ghostbusters film, to be an essential member of the group.

His advice at times is straight-forward and elegant, with a touch of humour.  Take when they were fighting evil spirits at the top of the hotel towards the end of the film and he offers this gem of advice to Ray Stanz (Dan Ackroyd):

"Ray, when someone asks you if you're a God, you say yes!"

Or how about his cool, spiritual outlook on religion and the afterlife in his discussion with Ray in the car:

"Well, I do [believe in God].  And I love Jesus' style, ya know?"

Furthermore, Winston is a practical,  no-nonsense guy.  When asked in a job interview whether he believed in ghosts and supernatural entities, he simply answers:

"As long as there's a steady pay check, I'll believe anything you say."

Winston Zeddemore turns out to be one of the most quotable, easy-going of the four characters in the original Ghostbusters film.  OK, perhaps Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) is a bit more quotable.  But, Zedmore offers practical advice and aphorisms that stand the test of time.  He presents a straight, no-bullshit foil to the other three Ghostbusters.

I've heard that the role of Winston was originally intended or Eddie Murphy.  This would have put an entirely new spin on the character that would have been interesting to witness.  However, Ernie Hudson does a phenomenal job of turning the Winston that now stands, into a charismatic, gentle, but straight-forward character who's blend of seriousness and humour flesh out the entire Ghostbusters team into a multi-faceted, well-oiled machine.

So lets not forget Winston Zeddemore.  Though not a founding member, an essential element in New York City's ghost-nabbing team.

Loves of a Blonde (1965, dir. Milos Forman)

The Czech New Wave obviously borrowed a lot from previous and parallel movements such as The French New Wave and Italian Neorealism.  Loves of a Blonde makes use of real locations, non-professional actors, and has a loose, improvisational feel that characterized the conventions of those movements.  What makes a Czech New Wave film like Loves of a Blonde distinct is its reliance on a darker, more solemn sense of humour mixed with a commentary on what was happening in Czechoslovakia at the time.

When you examine the film as a distinct entity, separate from its moorings within its time and place, you find a mixture of melancholy and humor, a deft blending by director Milos Forman of dark foreboding and tender observations on young love set against middle age disillusionment.   One thing that makes the film so enjoyable to watch is the star, Hana Brejchova as Andula, a young factory worker who has a brief fling with a pianist.  Her performance is captivating and extremely charismatic. 

I also liked the three act structure of the film and thematic concerns.  It paints a vivid portrait of youth naivety and exuberance juxtaposed with the mature, sombre outlook of the older generation.  It comments on the fleeting attention span of the young which is all the more relevant and problematic in today's culture of smart phones and media infiltration.  Forman has a real affection for his characters and Miroslav Ondricek's cinematography has a warmth and closeness, especially in the middle act in the apartment of the young pianist.

The dialogue is sharp and has a realistic feel that accurately embodies the two generations portrayed in a way that transcends its culture and makes it universally accessible by anyone regardless of age or nation of origin.

Supersonic (2016, dir. Mat Whitecross)

I was highly anticipating a viewing of this documentary.  In the 90's while I was in high school, Oasis captured my imagination in ways that no other musical act would.  Here was a band from England that captured the spirit of The Beatles and 60's British invasion in an unparalleled fashion.  Noel Gallagher's songwriting was transformative and alluring.  At its best, it spoke to my adolescent longing for freedom, transcendence, and spiritual realization.

Supersonic, the new documentary from director Mat Whitecross highlights the band's coming into being and dominance of the world airwaves at that particular time in the mid-90s.  Seeing it was reliving the excitement and wonder that Oasis were able to embody in their brief but amazing tenure as "the best band in the world."

The documentary is revealing in some of the behind the scenes stories and sibling rivalry that took place in the band's formative years and at the height of their fame.  I was enthralled by the story of a drug mix-up in which the band, thinking they were getting cocaine (their main drug of choice at the time), had actually procured a great quantity of crystal meth.  It effected their behaviour and on-stage performance very adversely.  But it also would lead to the trajectory that would eventually result in Noel's composing of "Talk Tonight" one of the band's most heart-felt and beloved B-sides.

The friction between Noel and lead singer Liam is always at the forefront and it results in some very humourous incidents and soundbites.  It is also interesting to see the way the film delves into the family dynamics in the Gallagher family.  The revelations of a physically abusive and absentee father and a caring, headstrong mother demonstrates the tenuous, fractured family environment that the boys were raised in.

The music is what makes Oasis.  The documentary is never shy about displaying the high-energy songs in all forms:  live, recorded, and in-studio.  It is amazing to see the early recordings of the band before Noel joined, or an early, pre-Be Here Now version of "All Around the World." 

Hopefully, this documentary will initiate a re-assessment of the band whose importance cannot be over-stated.  With the passing of time, their magnitude and ability to capture the zeitgeist should not be forgotten.  Whitecross's documentary does a great job of paying tribute to the band and the time in musical history when Oasis were on top of the world.