Did you know that the wild west was a terribly violent place? American Primeval makes this point again, and again, and again. Enough already, writes Luke Buckmaster.
American Primeval: Miniseries
The headline for one review of Netflix’s western mini-series American Primeval begins: “Peter Berg Shows the Ugly Side of American History.” There’s another side? The second word in the show’s title signifies an early period of time, very wild and primitive, full of violent boors stomping and shooting their way through daily life, greeting each other with lines like “you ain’t got no business being here.” This is the era of the unrefined, hardscrabble America, not the land of cultivated, conscientious, democracy-cherishing people we see today, who enjoy nothing more than reading a good book and only elect intellectually distinguished leaders.
American Primeval follows a woman and her son—Sara (Betty Gilpin) and Devon (Preston Mota)—who are on the run, journeying towards a place called Crook Springs in search of their husband and father. The trek wil be difficult: in addition to treacherous mountain ranges there’s murderous outlaws, murderous Indigenous tribes, murderous bounty hunters, hungry wolves, and worst of all, Mormons.
Their first few guides are, shall we say, unlucky. This poisoned chalice is eventually given to Isaac Reed (Taylor Kitsch), a growling mountain man whose raw-boned face suggests intense weariness and a lack of moisturization. Side characters include an Indigenous girl and stowaway, Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier); a bounty hunter and trapper, Virgil Cutter (Jai Courtney); the leader of the Mormon Church, Brigham Young (Kim Coates); and a Mormon couple—Jacob and Abish Pratt (Dane DeHaan and Saura Lightfoot-Leon)—who are separated after surviving the Mountain Meadows Massacre (an actual historical event).
Berg varnishes the frame with timeworn visuality, stripping the colour scheme right back. There’s lots of brown-ish, earthy hues, as if the show’s been rolled around in dust and left in the sun. At other times the palette becomes near-glacial, reflecting starkly different weather conditions, a literal cooling of the frame. It’s a handsome production but it has a bit of a dead heart—not much blood flowing through its veins, and not a lot on its mind.
To say these types of stories have been well represented throughout motion picture history is something of an understatement. The western is a—perhaps the—foundational cinematic genre, harking back to the very first narrative film (1903’s The Great Train Robbery). High Noon remains one of the greatest westerns partly because, in addition to being a ripping yarn, it interrogates the genre, reassessing its ideas and values, including the problematic notion of “frontier justice.” That film is now more than 70 years old but vastly more engaging, progressive and layered than anything in Berg’s series. It’s got action, shootouts, terse words, etcetera, but it also has a thesis… a reason for being.
What’s the point of American Primeval? We have to assume it’s about the barbarism and savagery of old frontier America; its total absence of people who say “please” and “thank you.” The show reiterates this again and again, making the point before it’s even really begun. Preliminary text inserts inform us that the land is “wild and untamed,” full of people “locked in a brutal war for survival.”
Violence is strewn throughout the show’s six episode arc, and staged with near-fetishistic enthusiasm. Initially the explorative, frame-holding camerawork of cinematographer Jacques Jouffret carries a sting, one early battle bringing to mind Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant (which comes from the same writer—Mark L. Smith). But that visceral oomph dissipates pretty quick. There’s a scene, about 20 minutes into episode two, which graphically depicts the murder of a group of women, one by one; this was the moment, for me, when the show crossed over into gratuity and I began questioning the motives of the filmmakers.
Violence pockmarks the plotline with blood and turmoil, but rarely ups the stakes or has much emotional impact. What can I say, without spoilers, about the way the show ends? There’s lots of bullets firing and arrows flying. We geddit, we geddit: this place is violent.
