Nothing screams it The universe suffers from an imbalance like a herd of wild animals running toward a ravine to die by throwing themselves into the void.
And so it begins True Crime: Nightlandwhich, from the first seconds, heralds the beginning of a terrible night that literally plunges a city into darkness for days.
The story takes place right at the beginning of the long polar night Ennisa fictional city in Alaska that, with the help of the Mexican director Issa Lopezsuddenly remembers this Eat it from Juan Rulfowhere the living and the dead sometimes seem to be the same.
This fourth season of the now legendary series HBO It is of course a police story that gradually reveals to us the investigation into a disturbing case.
But it wouldn't be “True Detective” if the plot wasn't anchored in complex characters who are perhaps even more exciting than the detective story itself (which I'll talk about without spoilers).
What is True Detective: Night Country about?
Here the case begins with the discovery of the bodies of a group of scientists, in the middle of the night, in the storm and in the snow, their faces frozen in horror.
How did the bodies get there? How did they die? What were they studying in the middle of nowhere in the Arctic? This begins a series of questions that need to be answered Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), a maeutic detective who claims to hate everyone – and this is happily reciprocated.
“Welcome to the end of the world“, shows a humorous? Sign welcoming us as we enter the town of Ennis. But the end didn't start with this case, the imbalance of the universe started years before with a murder.
And for this crime we meet Danvers' counterpart, Evangeline Navarro (Kali rice), an agent plagued by her family's history of violence and insanity but obsessed with pursuing justice for women.
Navarro is convinced that this new case of dead scientists has some connection to the unsolved murder of an activist who led a cultural resistance in the community.
The loneliness of the frozen wasteland
A racial and ideological tension emerges between the agent and the detective, gradually telling a shared story in which two colleagues reached a point of no return.
And when I talk about universal imbalances and worldviews, it's not to add to the conflicts in the plot: in the middle of the world that Issa López manages to createIt is natural for two police officers to talk about God and the presence of the dead in the darkness of the polar night.
For Agent Navarro, God exists, but he is not a God who comforts youShe is a god who feels as alone as she and everyone else in Ennis.
When Detective Danvers is lonely, she plays Fantasy footballsearch for quotes in TinderShe listens to white noise in her headphones so she doesn't have to listen to herself, to her pain.
On the contrary, Navarro prays, not to speak to God, but to listen. She tries to discover herself by listening to the voices that speak in the night of Ennis, as in the night Eat it by Rulfo whispering revelations.
“Time is like a flat circle”
In True Detective: Nightlandas in Pedro Paramo, Space also develops as a character. Ennis is a place where “Time is like a flat circle” (a sentence that came from the detective’s mouth Rust coal in season 1 and will be repeated in this season 4).
Ennis may hide in its ancient ice the possibility of a cure for humanity's ills, but at the same time it is a city of ghosts under siege by a mining company that is polluting the water, air and local culture.
And in the middle of life without sunlight, From the loneliness of the frozen wastelandfrom the terror of confronting the personal and collective past, from cultural resistance to invaders, from death that is not an end but a present, detectives Danvers and Navarro have no choice but to walk in the darkness and listen.
Rose Aguineaua character full of wisdom who, despite being secondary in the story, helps the others find their destiny, makes it clear when she talks about Ennis: “It's very quiet, except for the damn dead“.