A Murder At The End Of The World

https://tinyurl.com/4pfs8r4k

Are you watching this?

I'd never heard of it. But "The Week" recommended it and...

Every year on my birthday I do three things, eat a pastrami sandwich, watch a movie and have an ice cream sundae. And during lockdown I watched a movie highly recommended by "The Week" and it was a dud. So now, when the magazine tells me about something, I do research. And "A Murder at the End of the World" had an 88% rating on RottenTomatoes, so we dove in.

And immediately heard the Doors' "The End."

Last night I listened to Albert Brooks on Marc Maron's podcast. Albert had a lot of interesting things to say, but what resonated most was believing no one would remember anything and you had to do what was interesting to yourself. He just couldn't understand how people repeated themselves, how they did one successful thing and then did it over and over again until they died. That resonated. Albert also talked about this movie he was in called "The Wedding Party," and the studio renamed it "The In-Laws" just before release and it failed. Albert told them it would be compared unfavorably to the original, and it was, it was a dud. You always need to trust the artist, the artist knows best. Oh, they'll lead you off the cliff now and again, but they'll be right more often than wrong. And the most iconic use of "The End," one of the most iconic uses of a song ever, was in the opening of "Apocalypse Now." I saw it during a one week preview at the Cinerama Dome, with surround sound, the curtain parted, the helicopter was hovering, it was amazing.

So I wouldn't have begun my series with "The End," because people like me would judge you negatively for it. But "Apocalypse Now" came out in 1979, nearly fifty years ago, and when I was growing up we watched old films religiously, but fifty years before was the silent era, and I saw a few of those, but mostly we concentrated on films of the thirties and forties. So have today's generations even seen "Apocalypse Now"? The streaming generation, bingeing "Friends" and only going to the theatre to see superhero movies, if that?

And how many people were watching this show anyway, I mean you've got to have a subscription to Hulu. But the card before the title said "FX," which meant it premiered on FX first? Ultimately it turned out "The Week" was right, "A Murder at the End of the World" was only on Hulu, being dripped out week by week, but I didn't know that when I started.

So you've got amazing cinematography. And the scenes between Darby and Bill when they're hunting down the serial killer...

Yes, this is a show that jumps from the past to the present, and back again. Actually, a step beyond today, it's nearly sci-fi, and I've got little time for sci-fi. And in today's episode there was some clichéd dialogue but...

Then they flashed back to yesteryear and the show was so damn good again.

It stars Emma Corrin. I'd neither heard of nor seen her. She looks like that comedian Mae Martin, and interestingly Corrin is nonbinary too. I found that out when I did research, I always do research on the shows I watch. And I found out Corrin played Diana in "The Crown," but I don't watch that, I found the first season so slow it was like watching paint dry. And I hear people rave about it, but there are so many shows and so little time.

And a lot of the time Emma as Darby just stares into the camera. But it works, you can feel the tension. And when she's younger, and she's feeling things out, her impulses, sexuality... That rang true. She had desire, yet she was self-conscious, but she took the risk and...felt she experienced rejection.

And I saw that the show was co-created by Brit Marling, who also acts in the series, and I knew her name, but I had no idea what she looked like. I know she's a star, but this isn't the seventies anymore, never mind the eighties, when we had a mental scorecard of every actor, knew their films, and there was a clear dividing line between highbrow film and lowbrow television. You used to follow actors from movie to movie, you looked forward to seeing them, but now... Other than the superstars, someone can be labeled a star and you've never heard of them. Or they can have a number one record, like that woman who performed on SNL. But don't beat yourself up, don't feel old, the truth is the younger people are in the same boat, there's just so much out there that no one can know everything, no one can have a grip. So you forage, alone. Or, you can consume what's fed to you, like the boomers who still will watch only what's on cable, whose idea of a risk is to stream what Netflix recommends. But that's no fun. If you're not on a personal hejira, a personal search, you're missing out. Even worse, you can ignore almost all of that which is hyped, like the new Dolly Parton album, a marketing exercise, dreck, listening to Dolly sing rock is like listening to Tom Waits sing country.

So I looked up Ms. Marling and the PR headshot didn't look quite like the woman in the series, but by process of elimination, it was clear she was playing Lee.

And her husband... Creepy. It was none other than Clive Owen. Who broke through in 1998's "Croupier," a well-reviewed English film I saw in the theatre, back when I still paid attention to such. Here Owen plays a tech titan. And I won't say he's modeled on Elon Musk, but there are similarities, the calmness, the slow talk, the confidence, the belief they know everything.

And then someone dies, ergo the title, and you're starting to think it's "Ten Little Indians," but there are not enough episodes to kill one character per.

So I'm driving to Santa Monica yesterday and I see a poster for "A Murder at the End of the World" on the side of a bus shelter. And Felice went for a meeting, mentioned the series, and the two people in attendance were watching it too.

How did everybody know? How did they get the memo?

And there was a story on Emma Corrin on the front page of today's "New York Times" Arts section, but it started to talk about the plot and I thought they were spoiling it, but in truth these hype articles are all the same, i.e. hype.

So when it's in the past, a la 2010, "A Murder at the End of the World" is like "Mindhunter." You saw that, right, Fincher's show on Netflix? There were only two seasons, unfortunately. But when "A Murder at the End of the World" is in Iceland, at times it resembles a seventies disaster movie.

And I'm wondering if there's a buzz. Once again, you've got to have Hulu, but they're advertising, and now I'm telling you about it.

It rides the razor's edge, sometimes incredible, sometimes almost hokey.

But I'm watching.

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