Your Weekly Dose (03/01/22)
A common theme of myth becoming reality might tie this week’s film and print prescriptions, while there’s a much-needed dose of levity on the TV side. As always, thanks for subscribing and sharing.
FILM
Antlers
A pitch perfect creature feature that isn’t too preachy about its morality tale (or too enamored with jump scares), Antlers boasts strong performances from the principal cast including Kerri Russell, Jesse Plemons, and Jerry T. Thomas.
Julia (Russell) returns back to her small town Oregon home to reconnect with her brother Paul (Plemons) after a nearly twenty year absence. They have a traumatic, shared past from which they are trying to heal in their own ways. an equally troubled history. Paul is a sheriff, doing the best he can to keep the peace in a dying mill town. Julia takes a job as an elementary school teacher and, subsequently, an interest in one of her quiet students, Lucas (Thomas). Recognizing a kindred spirit (he too has a broken home life), she tries to intervene and unwittingly unleashes the horror that plagues Lucas and his family.
Drawing on the mythology of the wendigo, Antlers, nature retaliates against humanity’s hubris (how deep can you dig?) and exploitation (how much is enough?), both of the land and one another. This depressed setting could be Anywhere, USA, plagued by fleeing industry and opioid addiction. It’s a supernaturally horrific version of Dopesick, which I prescribed previously.
Antlers is currently streaming on Hulu.
TV
Murderville
There’s nothing particularly deep or spiritual about this week’s TV prescription. With real world horrors plaguing your social media feeds, perhaps a little bit of levity is just what the doctor ordered.
Murderville stars Will Arnett as homicide detective Terry Seattle. In each of the six episodes, a different celebrity guest appears to help him solve a crime. The whole thing is played for comedy as the two actors improvise the investigation, working through three suspects in each case. After the investigation; the special guest must choose which suspect they believe is guilty of the murder. The episodes conclude with Chief Rhonda Jenkins-Seattle (Haneefah Wood), Terry’s ex (she’s moving on, but he isn’t) either confirming the guest’s accusation or exposing the correct guilty party. It’s all a riff on our collective obsession with true crime series and legal dramas, and if you’re a fan of Arnett or any of the guests (from Ken Jeong to Sharon Stone), you’re sure to enjoy this one.
All six episodes of Murderville are streaming on Netflix.
The Morning Star
This week’s print prescription is so bizarre, I’m not sure how to write about it. And if you know anything about Karl Ove Knausgaard’s work, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. His latest novel involves the sudden appearance of a new star in the sky and follows nine narrators, each of whom begin to undergo strange experiences around the appearance of this celestial phenomenon. None of the narrators’ stories are resolved, and, in the end, it’s still uncertain what exactly the star portends, although it’s probably nothing good. There are also lengthy sections of the novel that spend pages on a character’s memories, dreams, and even experience of the (or a) afterlife or in complex philosophical and theological ruminations on life, death, and what comes after both. Yet there’s something hypnotic about Knausgaard’s writing and his attention to detail, with which you will be familiar if you’ve read (or attempted to read) his seven volume My Struggle.
Frequently, Knausgaard’s descriptions of the minutia of daily life, from commutes to work to drinks after it, are reminders that even in the profound uncertainty of life, there are beautiful moments that must be savored. Another writer might mine the sudden appearance of a new star for the cultural, collective panic that would likely ensue. That doesn’t happen here as seemingly everyone takes it in stride—the unexpected has happened before, it will continue to happen. Death and the uncertainty of what comes after gradually becomes an overriding theme in the novel (it even concludes with one of the minor characters’ essays on death and the afterlife), and the aforementioned lengthy vision of a possible afterlife recalls C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.
The Morning Star is available wherever books are sold, but consider purchasing your copy from an independent bookseller like the Last Bookstore.