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dwalkeryau
Reviews
Wakefield (2021)
One of the best TV series in a long time
This is an extraordinarily wonderful series that had me deeply involved from the first few minutes. Wonderful acting by the entire cast, great story line that is finely crafted with great nuance, and the humanity shines through as things unravel for our main character.
The metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle: people trying to put their lives back together, and the final piece that is needed to make you whole; is a strong and moving idea. The contest between the two leaders: the main character Nik, who leads through his humanity, versus Mandy who leads by control and manipulation, is a great side story and feeds into the overarching story of people's fragmented lives.
Some people seem to have found the jumping in timeline confusing. It took me an episode to get used to it, but once I understood that they were replaying the same scene from different points of view, it all made sense and I really liked the way the scene was so different for each of the characters. Just like real life.
I can't think of any criticism of this show. I hope there are more seasons, and we see more great shows like this in the future.
The Midnight Sky (2020)
No Story Arc
I enjoy most of what George Clooney does, both as an actor and a director, and I went into this movie expecting a nuanced drama in a sci-fi setting, rather than an action hero space movie. And that is what it is: a drama of one man's self discovery while battling the extremes of his environment to warn off a returning mission.
It could have been really good. But the story fails to fire because some of the most basic story-telling devices were not in evidence.There is no great transformation in our hero, so as a drama it fails to really interrogate the psychological state of the protagonist and move the story along in terms of his growing understanding of self. As such, as a drama, it is entirely static.
We are given facile backstories of some of the crew on the ship. They were cliches. I've seen backstories like this in countless sci-fi movies, and they don't make me care about the characters any more, meaning that I don't really care what happens to them, meaning I don't care about the story, such as it is.
The movie contains many action scenes that have no bearing on the story. They are just fillers. Maybe George thought that by throwing some meat to those expecting an action sci-fi story would be mollified. But even action junkies like their action connected to the story. The action has to make sense within the story arc. But because there is no story arc, each scene is a standalone vignette with no significance and little interest. And I think this is where the story writing failed. The story didn't know what it was, and this confusion is evident to the viewer.
As I said at the start, I was not expecting an action hero movie, but as a nuanced drama of a man's fight against the elements and himself, it fails in some really basic areas of story telling. But I think that there is a hair's breadth between failure and success and this movie could have been great with a little more focus on the story of the protagonist's journey through the extreme events he was thrown into.