"Deadwood: The Movie": a prestige show finally hailed

A film designed for television, whose format is the least prestigious, is a strange conclusion for a television series of prestige. But Deadwood, The revisionist West, which had originally used HBO from 2004 to 2006, has always been a bit strange in the pantheon of prestige. It's partly because Deadwood has the dubious feature of being one of the few critical touchstones of the average age to be really and correctly canceled. Among the many mutations associated with treating television, belatedly and often patronizingly, as an art in its own right, one of the most significant is the idea that a series of a certain stamp deserves a chance to emerge from his own words. It is now a common practice among darlings little watched as Leftovers or Stop and catch the fire to have one last chance to put an end to their desires, a kind of soft cancellation that facilitates the game for creators and the public while allowing networks to be profiled as benevolent patrons. The norm is actually the fruit of titans like The Sopranos or breaking Bad, whose legacies are partly illuminated by endings according to the visions of their author-authors.

DeadwoodDavid Milch, on the other hand, does not have this luxury. The history of DeadwoodThe abrupt conclusion is a comedy of errors straight out of a mid-season episode: Milch warned the star, Timothy Olyphant, who had just bought a house, before the decision was made; Olyphant, by his agent, warned others; finally, the news broke out in the trades, inadvertently sealing DeadwoodFate before having to be sealed. Despite the tragic circumstances, the cancellation was the logical conclusion of several years of conflict between Milch and HBO. Milch's tyrannical, ineffective and chaotic work style has helped to create the myth of the difficult genius of men. But it also lent itself to a resume littered with abortive and frustrated projects: the large pan John from Cincinnati; the unjustifiable logistically Luck; an alarming Succession-as a pilot, L & # 39; money, that never made the series; and, of course, promised it for a long time Deadwood movies. Plural.

For more than a decade, HBO's initial promise to give Milch a pair of two-hour films instead of a fourth season has gradually turned into indefinite delays, a prolonged break, and finally a single film released this week. Friday. In the meantime, events have plotted to reinforce the importance of Deadwood movie beyond a simple meeting. The passage of time has transformed DeadwoodRevered reputation – still troubled to simply revered; Meanwhile, the ascending career of actors such as Olyphant, Ian McShane and Molly Parker has helped secure the entire cast at once more evasive and more seductive. Most striking of all was the revelation that Milch, whose intellect expressed by the Shakespearean layman had defined the show, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2015. Milch spoke of his struggles with a franchise admirable in interviews, including an extensive interview with Mark Singer. of New Yorker in which he describes his illness as "an accumulation of indignities". Deadwood The film was no longer the cornerstone of a South Dakota mining camp, but one of the most decorated and prominent careers in the history of television.

Such anticipation overshadowed the fundamental strangeness of a Deadwood film as a concept. Like many of the best TV shows, Deadwood distinguished itself by exploiting and harnessing the strengths of the medium: a long narrative, focused on the whole. To the extent that Deadwood Even with one protagonist, the tasks were shared by Olyphant sheriff Bullock, fueled by rage, undermining the archetype of the white hat exploded one at a time, and McShane's Al Swearengen, become an unlikely community pillar. DeadwoodThe version of a psychopath attractive to the Soprano. But the soul of Deadwood never had a single ship. There were traces of it in Alma Ellsworth of Parker, a widow whose wealth and distance from polite society made her both liberated and vulnerable; in "Calamity", Jane Canary (Robin Weigert), the swaggering frontwoman who drowned her sensitivity in alcohol; at Sol Star (John Hawkes), Bullock's compassionate business partner who forged ties with Trixie (Paula Malcomson), an unclean employee of Al-Blau. We could continue to list support players, even the most miserable (Steve the Drunk) or the foolish (E.B. Farnum) imbued with a bit of humanity, until exhaustion of the list of the series.

DeadwoodThe broadcast was an extension of his themes. Through an improvised colony turning into a real city, from an unregulated territory into a state, Milch wanted to tell a story about how anarchy turned into civilization. To show this process, Milch portrayed a collective, with each member playing his own role in Deadwood's bloody, uninterrupted and inevitable scourge of legitimacy. Deadwood has adopted a cynical, or at least neutral, view of the slow encroachment of institutions; Milch was clearly not a big proponent of capitalism nor a convinced supporter of state-sanctioned violence as being automatically preferable to the kind that does not. Nevertheless, he was fascinated by the mental gymnastics and the powerful armament required to lock these institutions, as well as by the revealing features that they could bring out. For every Swearengen who found his dormant collectivist instinct awakened by external threats, there was a George Hearst (Gerald McRaney) – a pure and vampiric brutality conferring a shine of property considering the extent of his fortune.

This staggering and nuance is more suited to a saga of 36 chapters than to an abbreviated epilogue. A feature film project is simply not able to accomplish what Deadwood originally, and the best is not to expect it to do so. Instead of, Deadwood: the movie clumsily overlaps the demarcation line between serving as a microcosm of the series and offering the simple and enjoyable pleasures of a state-of-the-art traditional special.

The film focuses on the official celebrations of the states of South Dakota, which will take place 10 years after the final. Before setting eyes on the built city or meeting an older person, we first hear the sound of a train telling us everything we need to know. Deadwood is now connected to the outside world, an undying link to modernity – and a stark contrast to the fleeing horse that used to accompany DeadwoodOpening titles. This opportunity attracts some familiar faces, from Nomad Jane to Hearst himself, who is now an American Senator representing California.

The following is essentially a resumption of the end of the period DeadwoodIt's schism. Hearst wants to impose a precursor of development, in this case telephone lines, which will inevitably advance his own interests. it is so entrenched in the power structure of the United States that it is essentially one and the same person. ("We do not have a say in the pace of advancing modernity, I am just his ship," says Hearst.) This will put Hearst in direct conflict with one of the most purely Decent Deadwood, Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie). Bullock reacts sympathetically, but also recklessly; Al is more cautious, suspicious of Hearst but is also aware of the benefits of communication. "Discover your deepest nature, Swearengen. Walking with the future, "the tycoon exhorts. The film already includes edited flashbacks, but those who remember the bloody murder of prospector Whitney Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) or Bullock impulsively guilty leading the mogul to prison will no longer be needed.

Deadwood's eternal war between profit and morality, progress and chaos is counterbalanced by the realization of a simpler wish. Fans will want to experience the details by themselves, but all the tropes of a happy ending of the TV are in place. A baby is born, a wedding is organized, a funeral is organized and memories are given. Virtually all the events of life that can serve as a picket for a special are. Viewers are sufficiently connected to these characters for such developments to carry weight. But it is also disorienting to watch a show that helped redefine what television might be succumbing to structural crutches.

The dialogue on trademarks also divides the distinction between Deadwood and a more conventional style. HBO has apparently insisted on a locked script, preventing rewriting and last-minute elaborations that have contributed to DeadwoodThe inimitable rhythm. Although the result still includes many memorable phrases – readers will be happy to know that McShane drops his first "motherfucker" in less than 10 minutes – the sentences are much clearer. Former Deadwood must be viewed with subtitles in order to follow various conversations, with both read and watched episodes; the film does not require any assistance of this type. The gross exposure, highlighted three times by the aforementioned flashbacks, is another novelty.

But Deadwood has never moved away from his own meta series, and the film is no exception. The almost all-powerful standoff between Hearst and friendly city-dwellers has been widely interpreted as a replica of Milch confronting HBO. Milch even gave Hearst the same back problems that led to his signing, to an almost Socratic writing style, dictating paragraphs of dialogue to a group of assistants while they were lying at the table. ground. The film finds Swearengen sick and almost unusable: "You did a little long liver, Al, that's what you did," he informs Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif). In a refined titan fighting for one last position, it's too easy to see Milch himself overcome his illness to make this movie a reality. The spine of Deadwood replaces the spine of Deadwood, resulting in an imperfect but hard-won result.

Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The ring.