On 6/8/21 7:33 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:
has anyone watched it?
https://www.indiewire.com/2017/11/damnation-review-usa-network-depression-western-1201895171/
DAMNATION -- "Which Side Are You On" Episode 102 -- Pictured: Killian
Scott as Seth Davenport -- (Photo by: Chris Large/USA Network)
“Damnation”
Traditionally, when describing a show like “Damnation,” it’s customary
to describe how the central players figure into the very clear battle
it’s drawn for itself. Farmers in a rural Iowa community are fighting
Depression-era predatory price-fixing efforts by going on strike.
Banking interests are using all the tools at their disposal to gobble up
whatever’s left once their resolve is broken. But at the center, two
rivals emerge: Seth Davenport (Killian Scott), a preacher with a heart
of pyrite and Creeley Turner (Logan Marshall-Green), a corporate minion
with murky intentions.
That ambiguity is one of the sole instances where “Damnation” leaves
things to interpretation. Aside from some shifting allegiances and some
muddled origin stories, everything else about life in this Iowa town is
presented in the extreme. Poverty is moving in like a plague. Financial
ambitions among its wealthy characters knows no limits. Calls for
rebellion are made in no uncertain terms. This is a series that may hide
where some of its main characters stand, but it wants you to feel that
boiling point in every conversation and every passing glance.
On opposite sides of the picket line, players of all sorts stand ready
to use intimidation, coercion, and even murder to reinforce their
interests. “Damnation” plays out like an early 20th century combo of a
western and a mafia movie, with a delineated power structure on either
side, fighting a war that ensnares the local paper, out-of-town
anti-Communist vigilantes, and even one unassuming ice cream salesman.
The show certainly doesn’t want for forms of torture meted out against
people who end up on the wrong side of their enemies. There are gunshots
aplenty, but between meat hooks, pitchforks, nooses, and pocket knives,
“Damnation” still subscribes to a frontier justice mentality that
doesn’t discriminate against weaponry. Violence, in all its various
forms, is baked into the visual language of this show, with on-screen
viscera popping up (and out) at regular intervals. (Given the size of
the town’s population, it’s difficult to see how this is sustainable.)
But sometimes that damage doesn’t equal the torment these characters
inflict on themselves. One by one, characters detail their misery,
promising that they will stop at nothing until revenge is achieved. With
every single one of these individuals in the fray, minor or otherwise,
vowing some sort of retaliation, the result is a long-term psychological
standoff with unrelenting threats from all sides. “Damnation” seems
fully aware that an entire town of people, each with their own ideas
about justice, makes it impossible to keep order. It’s an interesting
problem to explore, but it makes a chaotic mission statement for a TV show.
“Damnation” doesn’t offer much breathing room. Every activity, be it an
auction or a peaceful Sunday morning church gathering, becomes a
battleground for the town’s soul. There’s drama in that, but all of
those showdowns bring with them a bevy of grand pronouncements that
don’t let either side of this fight get much capture.
In true cable drama fashion, no one’s hands are clean either. Villainy
certainly exists on a sliding scale, but the fellas at the top of the
bad guy list come with their own monologues and verbal treatises that
would make Blofeld blush. One particular string-pulling activist, Martin
Eggers Hyde (Gabriel Mann), seems like one peak in the show’s
neverending search to find someone more egregious and morally bankrupt
than the last.
The attention to period detail and use of an oppressive Midwest cocktail
of sunlight and summer heat make “Damnation” something worth looking at.
Even if much of what its characters tell each other is drenched in
self-seriousness, those talks play out against a screenworthy backdrop.
It might not reinvent the conceptions of a TV western, but there’s care
taken in orchestrating the river of blood and other fluids that quickly
line this town’s streets.
Drenched in economic anxiety and anger directed toward power-wielding
bank executives, race relations, and the power of the press all factor
into this ideological fight. Short of using “1 percent” and “fake news,”
this is striving to be a modern story with Depression-era trappings.
Luckily, explicitly connecting the efforts of these strikers to any 21st
century reform efforts is one connection that “Damnation” leaves its
audience to make.
While the show hasn’t quite figured out how to give them more to do than
their various social stations would have them be, the promise is there
for a version of “Damnation” that lets them feature into the story in
less of a cloaked, clandestine way. There are glimmers of Bessie Louvin
(Chasten Harmon) becoming more than just the redeemed prostitute. Amelia
Davenport (Sarah Jones) has a part in the coming rebellion that may even
eclipse her husband’s.
“Damnation” spends so much of its early going caught in a spiral of
misdirection that once the emphasis on bloodshed, doom, and duplicity
wanes, a series with sharper insights might emerge. But in its current
form, it’s a punishing watch, one with not much more to offer than an
animalistic view of human nature. You won’t find much hope in
“Damnation” and that’s an absence that can only exist unfilled for so long.
Grade: C+
“Damnation” airs Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET on USA Network.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#9075): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/9075
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/83409350/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
#4 Do not exceed five posts a day.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
