In some ways I think it's the best thing Refn's ever done, and in others it's incredibly baffling. Personally, I don't try to go in to films or shows with the intention of "figuring the plot out" (because I think that's a terrible way to go about watching anything, and I greatly dislike how TV encourages that state of mind) and it's a damn near necessary way of approaching this. Let it wash over you, figure out what it's doing on its own terms, then try to put things together.
The more I think about episodes 8-10, the more they make sense in the context of Refn's work. People forget that Drive is actually a massive outlier in his filmography, and Only God Forgives is much more typical of the type of thing he's does (at least since Valhalla Rising). Given that,
Martin was never going to survive the series because he's, at heart, a self-serving moral hypocrite. An assassin that kills abusers who himself aided and abetted abuse on the police force and is a statutory rapist. The entire reason he kills Theo (his girlfriend's dad) is because Theo threw his hypocrisy in his face (with the film and with the talk about watching them having sex) and made him confront what he really was. In this sense, being tortured and killed by Jesus is a twisted form of justice, even if Jesus is becoming a much worse human being than Martin ever was.
Refn's works always have a distinct morality to them. Even though Ryan Gosling's character in OGF is the focus character, he killed his father in an act of passion and humiliates his "girlfriend" to deal with his own humiliation, thus he's beaten mercilessly by the lieutenant (and maybe has his hands cut off at the end). Worse people in that film meet worse punishments. Purely self-serving violence or motives, and often times hypocrisy, never gets anyone anywhere in a Refn film, and the more self-serving or hypocritical you are, often times the worse your fate is (see also, why Jesse, and two of the three other main characters, ended up dead in The Neon Demon).
So Martin could never live in this show. And who ends up having the best light cast upon them by the narrative? Yaritza, a woman who infiltrated a cartel for the purpose of freeing its women (and possibly destroying it from within), Viggo, a former FBI agent who became fed up with the world it protects and helps craft in favor of killing the worst abusers imaginable, and Diana, the mystic who leads Viggo to those abusers. The worst of those three is might be Diana, who takes precious heirlooms from clients as payment for eliminating their abusers, but that's very minor compared to the constant abuses of the justice system or the practices of the cartel members (though someone like Jesus is very thorny issue I need to think about more. I think we might need to take some parts of his speech in episode 9 about the difference between acting like an American and acting like a Mexican more literally than we might realize at first. Still an awful human being, but also an instrument of vengeance against the world that people like Viggo hate so much). They get to survive and act freely in this world, and may do work toward solving some of the issues we see in the world of the show. This is also why it makes sense that the last episode focuses exclusively on Diana and Yaritza: they're the driving forces behind the actions those three favored characters I mention take.
With all that in mind, I'm definitely going to need to watch series at least one more time before I have a solid opinion on it. Everything from episode 8 on changes your perspective on what the show is too much for me to make a decision on what it's doing before rewatching it in its entirety.
The cartel meeting in episode 9 was the only highlight in the last two episodes for me. The supernatural element caught me off guard, and the rest just felt more of the same... (all the included)
Episodes 1, 3-8 were fire though. The season concluding on that point would've been good with me.
Two had some enjoyable parts ... Miguel's coronation in the bar with the lateral tracking shot was but overall it was too drawn out for my liking.
I agree there was no way Martin was going to make it out alive. You see he's a straight up piece of shyt from the jump, and no amount body bagging terrible people was going to redeem him.
It's interesting to me that although I was completely engrossed with his story that when his time was coming to an end... I felt just as indifferent to his death as he did.
But Janey though... I wanted her to go onto to lead a happy life free from all the demons in her life. She didn't deserve that end
The cartel meeting in episode 9 was the only highlight in the last two episodes for me. The supernatural element caught me off guard, and the rest just felt more of the same... (all the included)
Episodes 1, 3-8 were fire though. The season concluding on that point would've been good with me.
Two had some enjoyable parts ... Miguel's coronation in the bar with the lateral tracking shot was but overall it was too drawn out for my liking.
I agree there was no way Martin was going to make it out alive. You see he's a straight up piece of shyt from the jump, and no amount body bagging terrible people was going to redeem him.
It's interesting to me that although I was completely engrossed with his story that when his time was coming to an end... I felt just as indifferent to his death as he did.
But Janey though... I wanted her to go onto to lead a happy life free from all the demons in her life. She didn't deserve that end
Don't know how you can say episodes 9 is more of the same when it contains two or three of the most tender scenes Refn's ever filmed (something I didn't really expect at all given the first few episodes).
And I disagree about episode 10 not being a highlight. I don't think you can measure it against the others because it's more of a coda than a full fledged episode, but I thought it was about the ending that this series should've gotten given what it's about. Namely,
NOT Martin, which is where a lot of people are getting confused with this series, in my opinion. If it was about purely about him (rather than him simply being the primary character through which the show's important themes are filtered), then you actually could've ended it in episode 8 with the cartel meeting in episode 9 tacked on. But given that
1. We spend four full episodes of the series not dealing with him at all, and the series continues two episodes after he's chopped into pieces with barely a mention of his name
2. He's rubbed out almost immediately when Jesus returns to the United States
something else has to be going on. What the series is about is not Martin's journey, but what America has wrought coming back home to roost and the consequences of such a backlash.
Why is there so much time spent on the hierarchy and politics of the cartel? Because a lot of that comes from America and was transformed into something far more dangerous in Mexico. Why does Jesus go on and on about his mother wanting him to be an American, only to cap it off with a speech about being a Mexican and why that distinguishes him from weaker American practices? Same thing. Why are we constantly peeking into the blatant fascism of the police department or the Alex Jones-style radio broadcasts/shows? They're indicative of the the most virulent strains of American nationalism that partially ends up creating the conditions for a cartel like Jesus's to even exist. Hell, Diana's final monologue all but spells it out for us. I could go on.
Remember, Martin is described in the first episode as an "all-American boy," and is framed by the American flag in his apartment right before he goes to kiss his underage girlfriend. As much as we're directed to identify with him as a protagonist, he also symbolizes many darker aspects of the culture: abuse of power, fetishization of youth, entitled absolution, etc. His death means that the chickens have come home to roost for America (which is why Jesus makes that speech in the next episode) and the more altruistic actors left have to deal with the fallout.
This is the entire reason why the last two episodes even exist: they rip the genre veneer off of everything and acknowledge what's been bubbling under the surface thematically for the past 11 hours.
As for Janey, she's another character a lot of people are seeing through rose-tinted glasses. Yeah, she's had some awful shyt happen to her, but she's also a condescending legacy kid who lords her status and wealth over others in the series (the bar scene during episode 3 where she threatens to report the bar for serving her and then flaunts her money to the working class server purely to show her influence being an example). In a story heavily concerned with abuses of power and hierarchy, that's a cardinal sin. What happened to her should be no surprise given the themes the show's working with.
Don't know how you can say episodes 9 is more of the same when it contains two or three of the most tender scenes Refn's ever filmed (something I didn't really expect at all given the first few episodes).
And I disagree about episode 10 not being a highlight. I don't think you can measure it against the others because it's more of a coda than a full fledged episode, but I thought it was about the ending that this series should've gotten given what it's about. Namely,
NOT Martin, which is where a lot of people are getting confused with this series, in my opinion. If it was about purely about him (rather than him simply being the primary character through which the show's important themes are filtered), then you actually could've ended it in episode 8 with the cartel meeting in episode 9 tacked on. But given that
1. We spend four full episodes of the series not dealing with him at all, and the series continues two episodes after he's chopped into pieces with barely a mention of his name
2. He's rubbed out almost immediately when Jesus returns to the United States
something else has to be going on. What the series is about is not Martin's journey, but what America has wrought coming back home to roost and the consequences of such a backlash.
Why is there so much time spent on the hierarchy and politics of the cartel? Because a lot of that comes from America and was transformed into something far more dangerous in Mexico. Why does Jesus go on and on about his mother wanting him to be an American, only to cap it off with a speech about being a Mexican and why that distinguishes him from weaker American practices? Same thing. Why are we constantly peeking into the blatant fascism of the police department or the Alex Jones-style radio broadcasts/shows? They're indicative of the the most virulent strains of American nationalism that partially ends up creating the conditions for a cartel like Jesus's to even exist. Hell, Diana's final monologue all but spells it out for us. I could go on.
Remember, Martin is described in the first episode as an "all-American boy," and is framed by the American flag in his apartment right before he goes to kiss his underage girlfriend. As much as we're directed to identify with him as a protagonist, he also symbolizes many darker aspects of the culture: abuse of power, fetishization of youth, entitled absolution, etc. His death means that the chickens have come home to roost for America (which is why Jesus makes that speech in the next episode) and the more altruistic actors left have to deal with the fallout.
This is the entire reason why the last two episodes even exist: they rip the genre veneer off of everything and acknowledge what's been bubbling under the surface thematically for the past 11 hours.
As for Janey, she's another character a lot of people are seeing through rose-tinted glasses. Yeah, she's had some awful shyt happen to her, but she's also a condescending legacy kid who lords her status and wealth over others in the series (the bar scene during episode 3 where she threatens to report the bar for serving her and then flaunts her money to the working class server purely to show her influence being an example). In a story heavily concerned with abuses of power and hierarchy, that's a cardinal sin. What happened to her should be no surprise given the themes the show's working with.
Great points. What are the tender scenes you're referring to?
I'll admit my appreciation of Refn's work is shallow at best. The simple plots, visual flair, the cold, subdued demeanor of the characters and violence are what appeal to me. A lot of the underlying grander themes are lost on me simply due to the overly artsy nature in which he relays that message.
Great points. What are the tender scenes you're referring to?
I'll admit my appreciation of Refn's work is shallow at best. The simple plots, visual flair, the cold, subdued demeanor of the characters and violence are what appeal to me. A lot of the underlying grander themes are lost on me simply due to the overly artsy nature in which he relays that message.
I'm thinking of the Viggo and Diana scenes, as well as the story Diana tells to the waitress at the end of the episode. They threw me because they had a certain subtlety and warmth that I usually never see from his characters (or at least haven't seen since Drive). It might be because Halley Gross co-wrote the last two episodes with Refn and Brubaker, but they were there.
Refn's definitely an alienating director for many people, especially Americans. I always have the theory that had he not made Drive, he'd still be an under-the-radar arthouse director doing his glacially paced morality tales (the fate he seems destined for after this). Drive being the first real interaction the movie-going public had with his films (nobody saw Fear X, while the Pusher series and Bronson were definitely cult hits) put an unrealistic image of what kind of films Refn made into the heads of the audience, when that was never really "his" film to begin with. Ryan Gosling chose him to be the director after he was hired, and most of the development was done before Refn signed on. So when he went back to the slower, weirder, and more contemplative stuff like Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon, people didn't know what to do with it because it was so different from Drive while still looking like that movie. Had they been introduced to his work with, say, Valhalla Rising, people's expectations would be more properly calibrated.
Just finished, show was weird af like the majority of NWR's movies. Jesus was a fukking fakkit who wanted to fukk his mommy so he married a look alike and dressed her up like his mom Jena Malone masturbating had me shyt was funny af for some reason.
Got around to finishing this and I can say the show truly is NWR unleashed. It is the man fully indulging in his art and it is absolutely incredible.
@TrueEpic08 already touched on this, but the themes in this are NWR to a t. Much like Only God Forgives centered its story around Gosling's character, the protagonist but certainly never the hero, and the true actor of justice (the police chief), an enigmatic being of seemingly higher power, posed opposite him as the "villain", this series too confronts viewers with a story where the young handsome white lead is not the hero, but a part of a vile, rotten culture that poisons and corrupts all cultures around it. And the roles of Jesus and Yaritza, the latter in particular, are obvious in that light.
If I had to compare this to anything, this series does for current day America what Garth Ennis' Preacher did for 90s America, dissecting the maddening and depraved culture underneath the nation's skin in a world presented as a satirical caricature. I figure that's mostly where Brubaker put his strengths in on top of his strong talent in noir writing.
It's safe to say this series is definitely not made for everyone, if only because Refn doesn't even bother to try, but for those who understand Refn's art, it is an experience that is incomparable to anything else out there.
So of course it is no surprise that master plebians @FlyRy and @MartyMcFly are skipping this thread like the plague.
Yes, it's easily one of the most unique TV-shows out, but whether it fits with you is a different matter. It also gets much better as it progresses, so don't let the length and slow pace of the first eps scare you off.
Yes, it's easily one of the most unique TV-shows out, but whether it fits with you is a different matter. It also gets much better as it progresses, so don't let the length and slow pace of the first eps scare you off.
Yeah, wasn’t thrilled with the first episode. Something about Miles Teller, I think he has, maybe, potential to be a good actor, but I don’t really think he has been good in anything I’ve seen yet. I turned it off after the first episode, it was really fukking drawn out. I might revisit. That Baldwin was fukking TERRIBLE as his underage girlfriends father
Yeah, wasn’t thrilled with the first episode. Something about Miles Teller, I think he has, maybe, potential to be a good actor, but I don’t really think he has been good in anything I’ve seen yet. I turned it off after the first episode, it was really fukking drawn out. I might revisit. That Baldwin was fukking TERRIBLE as his underage girlfriends father
I think everyone should watch it, because it's both amazing and there isn't (and may never be) anything like it out there. Certainly not in America, that's for sure (Europeans seem to be more prone to breaking the TV/Film divide from the side of film, a la Olivier Assayas's Carlos, while Americans tend to move the other way with series like OJ: Made in America). I'm biased though, in that I think people are going to utterly revere this in 20 years or so.
If you're not into William Baldwin's performance (which I thought was fantastic), then you may just want to put this down and let it be, because that's really not even close to the weirdest element of all this. If you are going to go back to it, give yourself a week and either stick with it until episodes 4 and 5, or just start by checking out those episodes and then going back to the beginning (4 and 5 were packaged as a single movie and premiered at Cannes and its LA premiere screening).
It's the purest of pure uncut Refn, which while amazing in my eyes, really isn't for everyone.
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included)
but overall it was too drawn out for my liking.
Jena Malone masturbating had me 
shyt was funny af for some reason.
