“Asking what’s real and what’s not real isn’t the ‘right question’ anyway. ‘Night Country’ isn’t about what’s ‘real’ but about what haunts us: a game played with a dead child, an unsolved murder, questions about who one is and what one stands for. ”
This. All of this. It's a different kind of storytelling -- a kind of visceral narrative -- which doesn't fit the usual master narratives in which we've been raised. And when we don't have the right discourse for it, we defer to words like "atmospheric" and "moody." But we know how it feels, at least.
I appreciate your perspective on Night Country. I've watched every episode but find it slow, ponderous, and depressing, yet I keep watching because of the acting by Foster and Reis, and because I'm hoping there will be an answer to the various mysteries that are interwoven into the series. I'll watch the finale with greater appreciation than before.
I want to watch more episodes before I read all of this, but I’m with you. A side note about NP— you might know this already but he borrowed/lifted a lot of the highfalutin McConaughey palaver from the horror/weird fiction writer Thomas Ligotti. As much as I like True Detective, Ligotti’s philosophical ideas are far less glib and pretentious in their original prose context.
Ligotti is brilliant and while I don’t agree with his philosophy, it’s very serious and real for him; it gets degraded quite a bit when adapted and used as dialogue. To the extent that it is successful in the show, I think McConaughey should get the credit for delivering it.
The problem for me— and I’m not sure I can make this case convincingly— is that I think it’s a little pompous to have a character intoning that stuff. It works better on the page as almost a prose poem. But I like McConaughey a lot and I think he made a game effort.
I see this season as a lovely and very effective continuation of what I liked about the first one— the fraught but deep connection between the two main characters is really great. NP can think what he wants. This season is definitely more appealing to me than the second season. The third got unfairly overlooked, I think; it was pretty good.
“Asking what’s real and what’s not real isn’t the ‘right question’ anyway. ‘Night Country’ isn’t about what’s ‘real’ but about what haunts us: a game played with a dead child, an unsolved murder, questions about who one is and what one stands for. ”
This. All of this. It's a different kind of storytelling -- a kind of visceral narrative -- which doesn't fit the usual master narratives in which we've been raised. And when we don't have the right discourse for it, we defer to words like "atmospheric" and "moody." But we know how it feels, at least.
I appreciate your perspective on Night Country. I've watched every episode but find it slow, ponderous, and depressing, yet I keep watching because of the acting by Foster and Reis, and because I'm hoping there will be an answer to the various mysteries that are interwoven into the series. I'll watch the finale with greater appreciation than before.
I want to watch more episodes before I read all of this, but I’m with you. A side note about NP— you might know this already but he borrowed/lifted a lot of the highfalutin McConaughey palaver from the horror/weird fiction writer Thomas Ligotti. As much as I like True Detective, Ligotti’s philosophical ideas are far less glib and pretentious in their original prose context.
Ligotti is brilliant and while I don’t agree with his philosophy, it’s very serious and real for him; it gets degraded quite a bit when adapted and used as dialogue. To the extent that it is successful in the show, I think McConaughey should get the credit for delivering it.
The problem for me— and I’m not sure I can make this case convincingly— is that I think it’s a little pompous to have a character intoning that stuff. It works better on the page as almost a prose poem. But I like McConaughey a lot and I think he made a game effort.
I see this season as a lovely and very effective continuation of what I liked about the first one— the fraught but deep connection between the two main characters is really great. NP can think what he wants. This season is definitely more appealing to me than the second season. The third got unfairly overlooked, I think; it was pretty good.
Susan, Happy Birthday 🎂🎊🎈 May you have an awesome day!! I really love the story you bring to us. Mahalo so much.