42. On New York: A Documentary Film

New York: A Documentary Film (1999-2003; directed by Ric Burns) is an outstanding phenomenon in the genre of the television documentary. First of all, its total length of 17.5 hours, divided between eight episodes, guarantees that the selection of the essential topics from the history of New York City is not too violent, that all these topics are treated thoroughly and that the leftovers do not appear as tragic. Most TV documentaries are about what I already know and thus urge me to turn to literature to find a more detailed and systematic coverage. New York: A Documentary Film, on the other hand, provides a significant number of facts for those who want to create, bit by bit, their own history of that vibrant city. It does not merely demonstrate the facts related to its subject, as is often the case with overviews of history; it explains the less visible social, cultural and economic changes that have shaped the city's story, and it attemps to convey the atmosphere of the city. Emphasis has been put on the causes of the events, and the significance of these events in historical perspective is described in a way that does not outbalance the details. This equilibrium works well in that it gathers together all the signs that personify what New York City has been and is.

The biggest asset of this epic documentary is the deep love its makers have for its subject.

One of the interviewees states that there is no big novel about New York City as there are about London, Paris and Saint Petersburg. New York: A Documentary Film could be this missing "novel" – a rich, beautiful and emotionally captivating monument in honour of the greatest city in the world.

***

Scenario:

• New York Conspiracy of 1741
• Battle of New York 1776
• Alexander Hamilton
• Washington Irving "Rip Van Winkle", "A History of New York"
• Dewitt Clinton and the Erie Canal
• The New York Herald
• P. T. Barnum and Barnum's American Museum
• Walt Whitman
• Panic of 1857
• Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the construction of Central Park
• Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union Speech
• 1863 Draft Riots
• George Templeton Strong
• Fernando Wood
• Bethesda Terrace
• Cornelius Vanderbilt
• William M. Tweed & Tammany Hall
• Panic of 1873
• J. P. Morgan
• The construction of Brooklyn Bridge
• Lower East Side
• How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis
• The Sidewalks of New York
• Consolidation of New York City, 1898
• The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus
• Al Smith
• Building of New York subway
• Shirtwaist strike of 1909 and Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911
• Hoovervilles in Central Park
• Jimmy Walker
• Fiorello La Guardia
• Robert Moses
• Harlem Riot of 1935
• 1939-1940 New York World's Fair
• Triborough Bridge
• Cross-Bronx Expressway
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
• Protests about the demolition of the Pennsylvania Station
• Philippe Petit
• Construction of the WTC towers

I created the scenario on the basis of the documentary in autumn 2010. I began the review in January 2011, but I never completed it. I edited the text in July 2015. 

24. On Queer as Folk

The strength of the statement that Queer as Folk (Showtime, 2000-2005) is a television series that deserves remembering depends largely on the aspects of the show the critic chooses to emphasise. On the one hand, it is impossible to downplay the sociocultural significance of Queer as Folk; after all, it was the first TV-series that centered around gay characters and did it in a three-dimensional way, a phrase one of its actors used to refer to the unusual sexual and social frankness visible in almost each of its episode. More than being close to reality in its depiction of the life of the people who belong to a social group self-labelled as gay, it is realistic because of the deeply self-conscious and permanently playful reliance on the signs, stereotypes, and, if you wish, clichés widely spread within that group. Queer as Folk is thus an important cultural document of the mind of its creators, reflective of that of the majority of the gay community; it gives a thorough and funny, although unsystematic, overview of the gay perspective.

The fact that Queer as Folk is extensive rather than intensive in its nature is simultaneously the show's major default. It wants be representative of the general homosexual experience without paying attention to the possibility of the idea that homosexual identity could also express itself in ways clearly different from those depicted in the show. Therefore, it is extensive, but not extensive enough. Furthermore, the characters of Queer as Folk, even though colourful (especially Sharon Gless's Debbie), tend to be psychologically flat. Rather than naturally inhabiting the fictional world that has been created for them, they behave as extensions of their creators' minds, whose manipulations are, especially in the final seasons, clearly visible. This flatness makes the narrative of the series nothing more than mediocre; the creators of the show seem to have thrown together all the precious bits of gay consciousness without knowing how to organise them in a meaningful way. There is a lot of wit involved but not enough art of original storytelling. (Remember that Queer as Folk was created at the time when several landmark shows concurrently proved that there could be auteurs in television.) In terms of its intrinsic values, Queer as Folk is, henceforth, just an average TV-series, no better than Desperate Housewives, much worse than The Wire. It is its groundbreaking social role, and the subsequent status as an icon for a significant amount of people, that makes it a cultural phenomenon worthy of admiration.

18. Poirot: Still Alive

Some British detective dramas seem to have lost their charm and vitality in the course of more than a decade-long run. One cannot avoid thinking about Midsomer Murders here, which is now a poor reflection of what it used to be ten years ago. Aging is clearly not a problem for Agatha Christie's Poirot, the newest episode of which, Murder on the Orient Express, premiered in the United States on July 11.

Although the value of every adaptation can be assessed on the basis of the comparison to the original work only, in this case, to the Agatha Christie's 1934 novel, these adaptations have several qualities on their own. Of course, Murder on the Orient Express has been one of the most popular Poirot stories, and its conclusion, which reveals that instead of one suspect all twelve are guilty of the murder, remains stunning in any faithful adaptation in any medium. The particular value of the Poirot episode has first a lot to do with its cast. David Suchet, though visibly older than in 1989, when the series began, is still brilliantly convincing in his portrayal of the Belgian detective, and even now we regularly find the names of veteran actors and actresses in the show's cast list (in this episode, Eileen Atkins's role as Princess Dragomiroff is particularly noteworthy). The way the visual narrative uncovers the real identity of the victim - an Italian mafioso who had kidnapped and killed a three-year-old girl -, the murder of whom is later revealed by Poirot to be a revenge by the party of twelve, reminded me of the way convicted killers are normally presented in newspaper articles and books about the cruellest murderers ever. The actor really looks like a perverted criminal, and his portrayal, thus, affects the way we evaluate Poirot's dilemma at the end of the episode - whether or not to reveal the facts concerning the murder to the police. Poirot's inner struggle about such a Robin Hood-like treatment of justice - it is revealed that Poirot is a devout Catholic - is, compared to the novel, more highlighted here, and the way he is distanced from his positivist worldview and shown as a vulnerable human being makes this episode stand out.

What makes Murder on the Orient Express an episode especially close to me is its mise-en-scène. The train, on which the murder and the investigation take place, is at one point depicted as having stopped due to a snowstorm somewhere in the Balkans, and these frames reminded me of a similar scene in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. The similarity was so strong that it forced me to light candles, turn on Russian Orthodox music when writing this article, and imagine that it is snowing outside. Furthermore, the direct reference to a train in the title (titles like Shanghai Express, Chungking Express, 4.50 from Paddington, etc. always arise my interest beforehand for some reason) alongside with the fact that the events of the plot take place in the context of the pre-war British colonialism is an additional merit.

All these features made me recollect the time when Sunday night was the high peak of my week. The Estonian national television station aired shows like Poirot, Marple, Midsomer Murders, and Wire in the Blood then, and I always celebrated it with a good old English tea and a specially baked bara brith. These characteristics also forced me to reconsider my view that, today, good television is only made in the USA.

16. Two Souths on HBO: One Bloody, Another Floody

When one tries to compare the two Southern-themed drama series that HBO has launched since autumn 2008, one will soon come to the realisation that True Blood and Treme represent radically different approaches to the depiction of the setting in a television show.

In True Blood, a Gothic vampire saga now running its third series, the setting functions primarily as a background for the numerous twists and turns of the plot. Although the title sequence of the show - probably one of HBO's best - portrays a wide variety of phenomena that refer to the Deep South setting of the series (for example, shots depicting the bayou landscape, local architecture, religious fanaticism and the predatory nature of sexuality), the show itself is rather inconsistent in picking up these elements and using them systematically to accentuate the authenticity of the action. Instead of relying on the cues available in the environment in which the show is set, a huge proportion of external plot lines was brought in in the first two series of True Blood. Take, for instance, the entrance of Greek mythology into the second season of the series, a move that had nothing to do with the show's original setting. Numerous equivalents of the Southern folklore just seemed to remain unrealised here, giving way to the necessities of entertainment.

Since the plot and the setting of True Blood are, to a large extent, essentially incompatible, the story events of the show could take place in whatever part of the United States. But they do take place in Louisiana, and it seems to serve a purpose. Naturally, the swamp mystique could, on its own, be a great source of inspiration for a vampire-themed allegory - the past and present of Louisiana offer a lot of possibilities for that -, and this seems to be the case here, too. Yet for some reason, it was not a resource that Charlaine Harris, the author on whose Sookie Stackhouse Novels the show is based, as well as Alan Ball, the main creator of True Blood, chose to fully exploit. Instead, references to the locale remain chiefly in the field of mise-en-scene (accents, locations and design); even those directly affecting the plot tend to concern minor details only. Already the fact that Bon Temps, a small town in which the series is set, is a fictional location is a sign of a considerable distance from the attempt to portray the environment in a way that is maximally faithful to the physical reality. Therefore, the poetic approach to the depiction of the setting dominates in True Blood. On the basis of the plot, the setting is under constant manipulation here, and the world the show presents is quite different from the one outside.

Being fiction, Treme too cannot ignore the ultimate incompatibility of the real and the represented. It can, however, follow the details of the physical reality in a more consistent and precise manner than True Blood or even present these, instead of the plot, as the axis of the show. Depicting the daily struggle of the citizens of post-Katrina New Orleans in rebuilding their lives as well as the city itself and its unique culture, Treme is, indeed, so remarkable for its fidelity in details that, in the first viewing, one would probably find it quite hard to orientate in a mesh of references to the show's real setting. For example, most of the series is shot in location in New Orleans; original New Orleanian music (diegetic!) can be heard in large quantities in every episode; local colloquialisms, most of which will probably remain obscure to the bulk of the viewers, are thoroughly used in the dialogues; also, non-actors are involved in supporting or minor roles. One could go further and say that even the major characters are nothing more than accessories of the setting in Treme. In opposition to the rational and goal-oriented protagonists of True Blood, who seem to be little affected by their environment, the characters of Treme are, indeed, highly sensible of, or even defined by, external (and not only post-catastrophic) conditions. Henceforth, stressed by the use of an ensemble cast, the possibility for a romantic identification with one or a few characters remains rare, and instead, New Orleans itself comes forward.

There is, of course, a plot in Treme, but instead of dominating over the setting by reducing the role of the latter to the one of luxurious decoration merely, the depicted events are much more naturally intertwined with the space of the show, compared to most other television series. Thus, Treme represents a realistic approach to the portrayal of the setting: as in the physical world, in which the environment has always prevailed and will prevail in the future over smaller or larger narratives, in Treme, too, the setting is allowed to speak for itself. One apparent consequence of this approach is bigger adaptability required from the viewer; Treme must be enjoyed differently than True Blood. In Nancy Franklin's words, Treme prohibits the viewer from loving the show, while instead, asking him/her to value it. An emotional connection between the viewer and the series is, thus, eventually much closer, but it also needs more time (probably more than the length of ten episodes) to establish itself.

Compared to the difference of representation of the setting, then, the pure fact that True Blood and Treme are both set in the same geographical area remains rather unimportant.