True Detective 4: Night Country: the series finale, review

TOthe end True Detective 4 – on Sky and streaming on NOW – it’s like Big Little Lies (or even how Killers of the Flower Moon). Except in the series with Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon the crime is accidental, while in the series of Issa López it is a punitive expedition. But the bad guy(s) is the same: the troglodyte and violent professional white man; manager of private speculative mutual funds or scientist specialized in biological research in the ice of Alaska.

In line with contemporary sensibilities, in short, it does justice to exclusively male points of view. And feminicides. A choice that seemed to purists of TD (for whom only the first season is valid) and of the centrality of man in the stories more a fashion concession than peak TValthough it did make it (at least in the USA) one of the most watched series in streaming.

Filmed mostly at the Tsalal research stationisolated by a storm, the final episode – entitled Night County – is a satisfying close. Explains how Annie died (the indigenous activist who had an affair with the only surviving scientist, Clark). As all the other seven big heads frozen in Dante’s poses died. The role of the multinational mining company Silver Sky. And what role do those oranges that occasionally pop out from under the furniture and onto the snow play?

True Detective 4: Night Countrythe end

Is that the whole story? No. The visions, the sighs, the walking dead and the existence of an awakened local entity remain unresolved (the one that the locals call «She» – but she is Annie who died six years before or precisely She who is perhaps “The great mother of the territory”?: before Ennis, «before Alaska was called Alaska»). Women – the station employees who understood the mystery – they left the scientists’ clothes at gunpoint and threw well-folded ice into the darkness, they could return, instead «She took them»says Beatrice, slowly joined by the whole group.

And Annie’s tongue on the lab floor?, asks Navarro. “It’s not part of our history.” Reality, mythology and the supernatural do not fit together. And in fact at a certain point the «Time is like a flat circle» of the first season (time is a flat circle). The cult phrase that Rust Cohle-Matthew McConaughey steals from Nietzsche and which has become a nefarious paradigm of the TV format that seeks the truth between parallel truths.

In the finale of True Detective 4 the pronunciation Clark, delirious and strapped to a chair by Danvers and Navarro (Jodie Foster and Kali Reis), don’t buy the story of Annie coming back for revenge and want her to confess. For fans, thrown there in the sixth episode as a usurpation, this addition was very annoying. Yet he explains that, less millennialistic than TD1the skein of the series is still a matter that cannot have a detailed account of events. We’re not in an episode of Law & Order. «I can’t do the work for you»said Issa interviewed yesterday by Variety.

Adding, however, that ambiguity “is its signature and its curse.” Now, six episodes are not enough time to create real intolerance to extra sensorial incursions, but Issa comes very close. Time is a flat circle, yes, but by dint of rotating and showing ghosts, the crude mechanism of who has been, of having to arrive at a conclusion – extinguishes much of the animistic sense described by suggestion, avoiding the representation of the intangible. And he makes some accusations about misdirection and waste. Navarro’s sister’s and Fiona Shaw’s.

Not everything gets diluted though. Although illustrated in two parts, it is difficult not to believe how Clark that beyond the trapdoor there are no superior forces, instead of Blair Hartman (Kathryn Wilder). Blair who in the second episode, with an unmistakable look of concern, is perhaps the star of one of TV’s biggest recent spoilers. It’s also hard not to believe that Mother Nature (?) didn’t take revenge on Clark instead of becoming suspicious Navarro as instead is more than plausible.

But after all that dead and “perennial” dark landscape, the dead children and fractured identities, abdicating the geometric explanation – ecological abuse and denunciation – seems like a sudden exit from a horror show, however without monsters. Moreover effective with the arrival of the season of light in Ennis, the moment of Danvers’ report.

Best of True Detective 4 it is rather everything before, in the tension created by Hank Priorcorrupt and eliminating policeman, in Liz’s dissolute and rude philosophy, in the good construction of a sense of threat, in that sort of miniseries of Fargo thrown into another series. Network, the applause for the finale was equally shared by the chorus with the whistles. Among the latter, there are also those that are all retorts Nic Pizzolatto (the creator – showrunner – of the series and still producer).

At the beginning of the series he was rather neutral, yesterday he reposted negative reviews of the series which put particular emphasis on the superiority of his season (the first). That’s Issa’s story was forced into the TD format is a factthat he has recovered elements of the original while distancing himself from a magically sulphurous area is equally true.

The spite of a bad loser, however, in addition to concern the defeat of the ratings, would seem to concern more sadly the female occupation of detectives. Maybe even the solidarity that leads to the cover-up of the crimes and to a new day in Ennis, or elsewhere (the disappearance of Navarro). A decisive change compared to the exposition and role of women staged by Nic.

The pack of scientists it’s not exactly a brilliant portrait of the male mind, as an isolated and fanatical working group, reacts en masse like an animal. No more and no less like fandoms. That’s why the next battle will be at the Emmys at the end of the yearwhen Jodie, Kali Reis and Issa could win where Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson and Nic lost. So yes it would be The Hunger Games.

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