Tv Is Better Than Movies: Deadwood

In the last years, during my mental recovery, i found myself paying less and less attention to moives and more and more to TV series that i managed to miss at some point.

Having a vicious case of ADD always butchered my ability of staying behind a series or anything with multiple episodes. But as movies got sloppier and sloppier with time, i found myself (with a little help from the interwebs) caught by them. Whether its the black comedy turned drama turned violent thriller with psychological overtones of Breaking Bad or the exercise in entertainment via brutality of Kurt Sutter's shows (The Shield or Sons of Anarchy), i find the technical, emotional and slow burning effect of tv series much more powerful than most moder cinema.

Case in point: Deadwood. What you see on the surface here is a western themed series, with gritty tones and interesting actors. What you have is an epic saga on humanity that all takes place in a slimy, decadent soulless town, where actually historical characters are used to unbleash some of the most thought provoking and plain unsettling moments of TV history.

You have the great Ian McShane playing what seems to be a shady, amoral businness man and brothel owner and slightly turn him into a character that has the complexity of something lòarger than life itself. A man that swears to the point of surrealism, has no qualms about murder, abuses people constantly but that has the ability for grand gestures and a smart, cynicla view of liufe that is more true than anything ive seen. Or his "rival", a glorious Powers Boothe, who is a brutal ruthless individual while managing to be still so sexy and charimatic, that being charmed is inevitable.

And theres incredible and strong female characters, ambiguous antiheros, tragedy, irony, brutality (lots of it). All melted into one epic ride that has also some of the greatest cinematography ive seen in a while, with shots that could turn easily into paintings.

And the writing by the ingenious ex-academic David Milch... Wow. He creates a world where all characters come from the real world but have no fixated destiny. Some lives their real arc, others dont. Where philosophy and street talk mix. Romanticism, and sweetness take place unexpectedly in the middle of carnage and vileness.

I cant think of a movie that managed to drive me to tears or simply squeeze my heart as this series has done.