I saved the best for Sunday !
RECTIFY has returned in its quiet poetic splendor.
The "murder plot" still slowly unfolds, but RECTIFY is not a show concerned with solving puzzle, it is concerned with aftermaths and ripple effect...and with human nature.
In the premiere of this third season, at the end of one scene one character says "we can move on, can't we?", and of course the show's response is that we can't. I guess that's the reason I love it so much....apart from the beautiful cinematography and the stellar performances! In mediocre tv shows, especially soaps, characters move on all the time. in RECTIFY, as in my own little reality, there are old wounds still throbbing, haunting ghosts and lingering feelings.
You have to live your life, but you never can really move on.
It's telling that the senator who said the line about moving on, is having a stroke in the ending scene of the episode. He can no longer move.
Tawney's loneliness and pain here embody the state of so many characters in the episode. That beautiful shot is the epitome of the episode! The title "Hoorah" couldn't be more ironic.
Teddy is so lost that he can hear Tawney's voice while she isn't even there.
Later, at the dinner table with Janet, Ted and Daniel, he still pretends she lives at home...
Meanwhile Daniel is framed in a way to point out that he's between Janet and her step-son, separating them - and it turns out that the meal she thought was the one Daniel loved is actually Teddy's favourite! -, for before the Daniel-Tawney-Teddy triange even happened, Daniel first kinda severed the mother-son bond Janet had with Teddy.
Outside Teddy drops any pretense in front of Daniel, when they are alone together. The misunderstanding between them is just wonderful. Teddy hears what he fears and misinetrprets what Daniel says. Daniel is unable to convey with words what he really thinks and lets Teddy mistake his intentions. BTW I loved the shot below:
Teddy is in white while Daniel is in black, among the shadows, they are polar opposites...and yet in the opening scene, Teddy was filmed in a way that was quite reminiscent of Daniel's flashbacks in death row:
There is no hero and no villain in this play. BTW if we look closely, Daniel isn't really in black. His clothes are darker but his t-shirt is just grey:
And then, the next day, Janet shows up at Teddy's empty house and the scene is heartbreaking.
“I wish I hadn’t asked you to call me Janet” she says, "No biggie" he responds, but it's obvious he's just trying not to cry. And I was close to tears myself!
Aden Young is terrific as Daniel, but I so agree with Brandon Nowalk, who now reviews the show on the AV Club, that "Clayne Crawford is television’s best kept secret". His Teddy never ceases to move me. Amazing performance.
And then the flashbacks bring us back into Daniel's broken mind, where he is alone in death row, facing a probable fate:
But Daniel is actually outside, in the sun, on a park bench, trying to read a book:
And it's another wonderful and poignant scene when he tries to connect to that woman until he realises that the mother who is with her daughter in a playground is suspicious. "i'm nobody...to be worried about" he says to make her at ease, and he describes the experience of being outside as "almost too much", but of course he sounds creepy when saying such things. So he walks away.
Since he took the plea deal and confessed Daniel has been banished from the county, Ted kicked him out of his mother's house, and he can't stay in that park either. No wonder he fantasized about his execution later...
The sequence also points out that Daniel is quite living his life yet, just observing what is happening to himself.
In the fantasy his mother quickly shows up behind the curtain before disappearing almost as soon as she appeared.
Is this foreshadowing her reaction when she hears of his assaulting Teddy? Janet is already feeling guilty about not being there for Teddy, so I bet she will side with him and foresaken her biological son.
In the picture below, the reflection and the perspective seem to suggest that for Daniel, life is a perpetual setting for execution, a series of stakes. Tawney would have probably said a series of crucifixions!
It is never over...
Daniel is like his mother's kitchen, destroyed (and he is the one who destroyed it so maybe it means he did kill Hannah and distroyed his own self in the process), but he isn't quite willing to fix himself yet.
Eventually he can count on Amantha to let him stay at her place, but she's been burned and she much more distant now.
RECTIFY is so beautiful that I think it's a shame that so few people watch it. On the other hand it's like we are happy few enjoying a secret treasure, and it has been renewed for a fourth season anyway. Matt Brennan, on Indiewire, called it "devotional television" and wrote a great piece about the show's greatness: http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/the-radical-belief-of-sundance-channels-extraordinary-rectify-20150707
Here are a few quotations from the article:
"In the sight of small crosses around women's necks and the distant sound of "glorious" thunder, in allusions to Thomas Aquinas and the Bhagavad-Gita, "Rectify" is a potent reminder that the devout scarcely swallow catechism whole, but rather reinterpret religion's constellation of texts, teachings, and rituals as circumstances change. [...]
In nearly every creative choice, "Rectify" exhibits a homespun, lived-in attention to the richness of the region's social life, warts and wonder alike.[...] Almost alone among series that treat such serious subjects, the action of "Rectify" takes place mostly between dawn and dusk, its clean, simple realism suffused with an otherworldly glow. Even here, as the characters face a dark, uncertain future, the image suggests the work of grace."
The "murder plot" still slowly unfolds, but RECTIFY is not a show concerned with solving puzzle, it is concerned with aftermaths and ripple effect...and with human nature.
In the premiere of this third season, at the end of one scene one character says "we can move on, can't we?", and of course the show's response is that we can't. I guess that's the reason I love it so much....apart from the beautiful cinematography and the stellar performances! In mediocre tv shows, especially soaps, characters move on all the time. in RECTIFY, as in my own little reality, there are old wounds still throbbing, haunting ghosts and lingering feelings.
You have to live your life, but you never can really move on.
It's telling that the senator who said the line about moving on, is having a stroke in the ending scene of the episode. He can no longer move.
Tawney's loneliness and pain here embody the state of so many characters in the episode. That beautiful shot is the epitome of the episode! The title "Hoorah" couldn't be more ironic.
Teddy is so lost that he can hear Tawney's voice while she isn't even there.
Later, at the dinner table with Janet, Ted and Daniel, he still pretends she lives at home...
Meanwhile Daniel is framed in a way to point out that he's between Janet and her step-son, separating them - and it turns out that the meal she thought was the one Daniel loved is actually Teddy's favourite! -, for before the Daniel-Tawney-Teddy triange even happened, Daniel first kinda severed the mother-son bond Janet had with Teddy.
Outside Teddy drops any pretense in front of Daniel, when they are alone together. The misunderstanding between them is just wonderful. Teddy hears what he fears and misinetrprets what Daniel says. Daniel is unable to convey with words what he really thinks and lets Teddy mistake his intentions. BTW I loved the shot below:
Teddy is in white while Daniel is in black, among the shadows, they are polar opposites...and yet in the opening scene, Teddy was filmed in a way that was quite reminiscent of Daniel's flashbacks in death row:
There is no hero and no villain in this play. BTW if we look closely, Daniel isn't really in black. His clothes are darker but his t-shirt is just grey:
And then, the next day, Janet shows up at Teddy's empty house and the scene is heartbreaking.
“I wish I hadn’t asked you to call me Janet” she says, "No biggie" he responds, but it's obvious he's just trying not to cry. And I was close to tears myself!
Aden Young is terrific as Daniel, but I so agree with Brandon Nowalk, who now reviews the show on the AV Club, that "Clayne Crawford is television’s best kept secret". His Teddy never ceases to move me. Amazing performance.
And then the flashbacks bring us back into Daniel's broken mind, where he is alone in death row, facing a probable fate:
But Daniel is actually outside, in the sun, on a park bench, trying to read a book:
And it's another wonderful and poignant scene when he tries to connect to that woman until he realises that the mother who is with her daughter in a playground is suspicious. "i'm nobody...to be worried about" he says to make her at ease, and he describes the experience of being outside as "almost too much", but of course he sounds creepy when saying such things. So he walks away.
Since he took the plea deal and confessed Daniel has been banished from the county, Ted kicked him out of his mother's house, and he can't stay in that park either. No wonder he fantasized about his execution later...
The sequence also points out that Daniel is quite living his life yet, just observing what is happening to himself.
In the fantasy his mother quickly shows up behind the curtain before disappearing almost as soon as she appeared.
Is this foreshadowing her reaction when she hears of his assaulting Teddy? Janet is already feeling guilty about not being there for Teddy, so I bet she will side with him and foresaken her biological son.
In the picture below, the reflection and the perspective seem to suggest that for Daniel, life is a perpetual setting for execution, a series of stakes. Tawney would have probably said a series of crucifixions!
It is never over...
Daniel is like his mother's kitchen, destroyed (and he is the one who destroyed it so maybe it means he did kill Hannah and distroyed his own self in the process), but he isn't quite willing to fix himself yet.
Eventually he can count on Amantha to let him stay at her place, but she's been burned and she much more distant now.
RECTIFY is so beautiful that I think it's a shame that so few people watch it. On the other hand it's like we are happy few enjoying a secret treasure, and it has been renewed for a fourth season anyway. Matt Brennan, on Indiewire, called it "devotional television" and wrote a great piece about the show's greatness: http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/the-radical-belief-of-sundance-channels-extraordinary-rectify-20150707
Here are a few quotations from the article:
"In the sight of small crosses around women's necks and the distant sound of "glorious" thunder, in allusions to Thomas Aquinas and the Bhagavad-Gita, "Rectify" is a potent reminder that the devout scarcely swallow catechism whole, but rather reinterpret religion's constellation of texts, teachings, and rituals as circumstances change. [...]
In nearly every creative choice, "Rectify" exhibits a homespun, lived-in attention to the richness of the region's social life, warts and wonder alike.[...] Almost alone among series that treat such serious subjects, the action of "Rectify" takes place mostly between dawn and dusk, its clean, simple realism suffused with an otherworldly glow. Even here, as the characters face a dark, uncertain future, the image suggests the work of grace."