Tom hardy nootka sound8/31/2023 When Delaney gets up in the faces of people who made him do bad things or who are trying to evade their responsibility for other people’s suffering, the series becomes a curiously Freudian political drama: Taboo is about the return of the repressed, but also the suppressed, with Delaney serving as a vessel for social commentary about the species-wide violence and corruption wrought by imperialism, racism, and capitalism. (One of Taboo’s many pop-culture reference points is High Plains Drifter, a 1973 Western starring Eastwood as a stranger who repaints a town red, renames it Hell, and punishes its inhabitants for signing off on a man’s murder to cover up a real-estate conspiracy.) When he strides through London alleyways in his long coat and top hat, he’s sometimes framed and lit like an artist’s interpretation of Jack the Ripper. More often, though, Delaney is a revenge-movie protagonist with villainous, even demonic qualities. Delaney is a flesh-and-blood man with a history and a personality, and his work on behalf of the East India Tea Company (an early transnational corporation that’s portrayed as having more power than some governments) has traumatized him so deeply that when he’s alone, away from the sight lines of those he’s hoping to intimidate, he struggles to hold the shattered pieces of himself together. The three episodes sent to reviewers have a nightmarish hypnotic power, with fanatically detailed sets and costumes, a CGI-heavy production design that suggests Sin City by way of Charles Dickens, and a snarling, Clint Eastwood–style Frankenstein’s monster anti-hero at its center. Set more than 200 years ago in muddy London, the period piece Taboo is a vivid but pokey FX mini-series about international adventurer James Delaney (Tom Hardy), who returns to England to claim an inheritance, avenge his dead dad, and inflict an empire’s sins upon it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |