Okay so the idea is to remain alert in our viewing, neither merely react nor let ourselves be numbed by what's on the screen. In this way all the cinematic elements fall into place and we can discard what gets in the way of seeing clearly.
This for example, it's about a day in the life of Los Angeles cops patrolling the streets. The whole thing is held at a distance the makers would probably describe as unsentimental and real, it's shot in a docu style, they don't go out of their way to idealize cops and victims. We get all this in a diaristic format that no feature film could afford that lets us just tangle with life.
For a while it's powerful stuff. All of that power for me comes from the abstract way we are lowered into this world (in the shoes of a rookie cop on his first day) and left to swim. It's a meaningless world that has been already spinning off by itself as we enter. We know little about the characters and learn little for a long time except what we see of them during the job. Their job is our viewing as well, having to face damaged life in every corner.
All of this plays not just against a Los Angeles backdrop, the city is the protagonist. I came into this as part of a cinematic project about LA and I found one of the most vibrant depictions of it, the camera hurls itself everywhere, from fancy Bel Air mansions to ghetto backalleys. Some of the most evocative shots frame desperate characters on the rooftops of buildings with clear skies in the back.
So to see clearly into this is to get this blueprint of a transient world of suffering with people tracing aimless orbits through the city. Very little is meaningfully changed or redeemed and each day is only another opportunity to go in and out of suffering, stay alert and present. Nothing builds, everything dissolves back into the smoggy air come nightfall.
Like most TV this is eventually diluted the more it goes on, life becomes plot, the dilemmas become habit. By that point we are as numbed as the weary cops of 20 years we met on that first day. But for a while it offers a glimpse no other work I know of at this point does; imagine, in another 20 years time people are going to look back and find it tame.
This for example, it's about a day in the life of Los Angeles cops patrolling the streets. The whole thing is held at a distance the makers would probably describe as unsentimental and real, it's shot in a docu style, they don't go out of their way to idealize cops and victims. We get all this in a diaristic format that no feature film could afford that lets us just tangle with life.
For a while it's powerful stuff. All of that power for me comes from the abstract way we are lowered into this world (in the shoes of a rookie cop on his first day) and left to swim. It's a meaningless world that has been already spinning off by itself as we enter. We know little about the characters and learn little for a long time except what we see of them during the job. Their job is our viewing as well, having to face damaged life in every corner.
All of this plays not just against a Los Angeles backdrop, the city is the protagonist. I came into this as part of a cinematic project about LA and I found one of the most vibrant depictions of it, the camera hurls itself everywhere, from fancy Bel Air mansions to ghetto backalleys. Some of the most evocative shots frame desperate characters on the rooftops of buildings with clear skies in the back.
So to see clearly into this is to get this blueprint of a transient world of suffering with people tracing aimless orbits through the city. Very little is meaningfully changed or redeemed and each day is only another opportunity to go in and out of suffering, stay alert and present. Nothing builds, everything dissolves back into the smoggy air come nightfall.
Like most TV this is eventually diluted the more it goes on, life becomes plot, the dilemmas become habit. By that point we are as numbed as the weary cops of 20 years we met on that first day. But for a while it offers a glimpse no other work I know of at this point does; imagine, in another 20 years time people are going to look back and find it tame.