alibi_shop (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibi_shop) wrote2019-02-13 08:03 pm
alibi_shop) wrote2019-02-13 08:03 pm
TV: Russian Doll (Netflix, 2019)
In a few decades (if we still have genre entertainment) the idea of characters stuck in a time loop will be either completely forgotten, or one of those strangely long-lived subgenres that most people aren't familiar with the origin of, like "zombie apocalypse" or "people flying around inside giant robots." I've seen it done half a dozen times and you basically always get the same story beats, where the person accumulates a lot of information about people and has to repeat a series of actions to get toward whatever the goal is and make it all stop. Usually, unlike the original version in Groundhog Day where the limit is the end of the day or death, they just go with it being death (which kind of parallels how the zombie idea evolved from Romero: he had every dead person coming back and also it's contagious, but now it's usually just that it's contagious). And usually, unlike Groundhog Day, there's some attempt to explain why this is happening other than "because you're a jerk and it's funny." And usually I just don't see the point, except for Edge of Tomorrow which is great.
Anyway, Russian Doll deceptively looks at first like just another one of these things. There's a repetitive song that plays every time Nadia (Natasha Lyonne, who co-wrote the show) comes back to square one; there are some interactions with various people that seem like they're being set up to repeat later; there are the standard questions like "Are you having déjà vu?" But pretty soon the template starts to deform, and the first sign is just how the character is written. Nadia is someone who can be frightened, but who can't really be surprised by anything; her attitude toward inexplicable phenomena is mostly that they piss her off. Like Lyonne herself, Nadia is extremely familiar with drugs (I've seen it argued that the whole series is about addiction, and I'm not sure I'd go that far, but that's definitely in there), so for a while she's just trying to figure out what kind of drugs she might have taken to bring this on. Once she rules that out, her main concern besides "how do I stop this" is "am I actually dead right now"—a reasonable question that I don't think I've seen anyone ask in a story like this.
Also, there's very little of the retracing-my-steps-every-time stuff, because there wasn't any task that Nadia actually needed to do (she does come up with one later, when she finds out that someone's in danger and needs to be protected, but she's really bad at remembering that). But the biggest innovation in terms of the story is that it's not a stable system. It's not "this could go on forever until you learn your lesson" or "until you blow up the alien"; the world is changing in little ways each time and becoming less and less complete (it's the best dramatic rendering I've seen of the "reality becoming more cruddy and lonely" idea that Philip K. Dick was so fond of). The world also seems to be actively trying to kill Nadia as often as possible, and this ends up kind of making sense—to the extent that it needs to—once she meets Alan (Charlie Barnett), whose role in this can't really be described without spoilers, but I'll just say that the resolution of the plot depends on seeing things from both of their points of view. I'm not sure I could totally explain what does happen to Nadia and Alan at the very end, but it's surprising and, for me, very emotionally effective.
None of this story material would be anywhere near as interesting as it is without Lyonne's performance. I'd only seen her in Orange is the New Black, where she's extremely good, but she's stunning in this. It's a comic role with an undercurrent of life-long trauma, and those two sides meet up in her physical characterization: she moves like a clown who's just had 10 cigarettes and a shot of whiskey for breakfast and has shackles on her feet but they're not really slowing her down. It's easy enough to play "I've seen it all and I don't care," but Lyonne complicates that attitude with notes of fear, curiosity, and compassion; when she's talking with the homeless guy played by Brendan Sexton III, it's as sweet as a scene between two totally unsentimental people can be. Once she's sharing center stage with Barnett things feel a little less focused, and Alan is a somewhat less interesting character, but I do really like Barnett's brittle performance and the not-smooth progression of how they interact. There are a lot of other good actors, but Chloë Sevigny totally steals one episode as Nadia's terrifying mother.
On a different note, this is probably the best portrayal I've seen of a certain kind of New York City party crowd where the people are cool and annoying, and have money from God knows where, but could still be good friends within certain limits.
Anyway, Russian Doll deceptively looks at first like just another one of these things. There's a repetitive song that plays every time Nadia (Natasha Lyonne, who co-wrote the show) comes back to square one; there are some interactions with various people that seem like they're being set up to repeat later; there are the standard questions like "Are you having déjà vu?" But pretty soon the template starts to deform, and the first sign is just how the character is written. Nadia is someone who can be frightened, but who can't really be surprised by anything; her attitude toward inexplicable phenomena is mostly that they piss her off. Like Lyonne herself, Nadia is extremely familiar with drugs (I've seen it argued that the whole series is about addiction, and I'm not sure I'd go that far, but that's definitely in there), so for a while she's just trying to figure out what kind of drugs she might have taken to bring this on. Once she rules that out, her main concern besides "how do I stop this" is "am I actually dead right now"—a reasonable question that I don't think I've seen anyone ask in a story like this.
Also, there's very little of the retracing-my-steps-every-time stuff, because there wasn't any task that Nadia actually needed to do (she does come up with one later, when she finds out that someone's in danger and needs to be protected, but she's really bad at remembering that). But the biggest innovation in terms of the story is that it's not a stable system. It's not "this could go on forever until you learn your lesson" or "until you blow up the alien"; the world is changing in little ways each time and becoming less and less complete (it's the best dramatic rendering I've seen of the "reality becoming more cruddy and lonely" idea that Philip K. Dick was so fond of). The world also seems to be actively trying to kill Nadia as often as possible, and this ends up kind of making sense—to the extent that it needs to—once she meets Alan (Charlie Barnett), whose role in this can't really be described without spoilers, but I'll just say that the resolution of the plot depends on seeing things from both of their points of view. I'm not sure I could totally explain what does happen to Nadia and Alan at the very end, but it's surprising and, for me, very emotionally effective.
None of this story material would be anywhere near as interesting as it is without Lyonne's performance. I'd only seen her in Orange is the New Black, where she's extremely good, but she's stunning in this. It's a comic role with an undercurrent of life-long trauma, and those two sides meet up in her physical characterization: she moves like a clown who's just had 10 cigarettes and a shot of whiskey for breakfast and has shackles on her feet but they're not really slowing her down. It's easy enough to play "I've seen it all and I don't care," but Lyonne complicates that attitude with notes of fear, curiosity, and compassion; when she's talking with the homeless guy played by Brendan Sexton III, it's as sweet as a scene between two totally unsentimental people can be. Once she's sharing center stage with Barnett things feel a little less focused, and Alan is a somewhat less interesting character, but I do really like Barnett's brittle performance and the not-smooth progression of how they interact. There are a lot of other good actors, but Chloë Sevigny totally steals one episode as Nadia's terrifying mother.
On a different note, this is probably the best portrayal I've seen of a certain kind of New York City party crowd where the people are cool and annoying, and have money from God knows where, but could still be good friends within certain limits.