Binge-r #268: Manhattan + The Power of the Dog
Big Bang Theory: Ashley Zukerman (Charlie) and Rachel Brosnahan (Abby) in Manhattan
MANHATTAN S1
Streaming Service: Stan
Availability: All 13 episodes now streaming, plus S2
It’s July 1943, or “766 days until Hiroshima”. Manhattan is about the creation of the first atomic bomb by America during World War II. Historically we know the when, but now the how. Created by Sam Shaw (Masters of Sex), it’s a near classical American television drama – parallel storylines, bitterly revealed themes, solemn pacing – that focuses on theoretical explosions and the everyday eruptions that mark their progress. Set at the desert research facility of Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the streets literally have no names, it’s about very smart people competing to potentially destroy the world. “We’ve got the highest combined IQ of any town in America,” brilliant young physicist Charlie Isaacs (Ashley Zukerman) is told upon arrival, but he’s soon thinking about “the burn radius” and “civilian casualties”. But slowing down isn’t an option: somewhere in Germany there is a similar town where Werner Heisenberg is also trying to build an atomic weapon.
Manhattan first aired (on an obscure American network, WGN) between 2014 and 2016. It’s safe to say that Mad Men’s success helped get it into production. As in the show about the advertising industry in the 1960s there’s a great deal of day drinking, personal anguish and grappling with creative solutions. While historic figures such as the seer-like Robert Oppenheimer (Daniel London) sit atop the power structure, the narrative is staffed with fictional characters such as Charlie and Frank Winter (John Benjamin Hickey). The latter runs an insurgent research cell competing with the main team – intellectual pride is as powerful a motivator as ending a bloody conflict. Their cloistered world, with paranoid security, is both bygone and contemporary. “Computers” are a cadre of number-crunching women, but enhanced interrogation was prevalent long before the war on terror.
With a cross-section of scientists this is a show for anyone who enjoys character actors: there’s Daniel Stern with a beard, Harry Lloyd (Counterpart) as a sardonic Brit, Christopher Denham (Mad Men), and the eternally droll Michael Chernus (Patriot). But what gives the increasingly offbeat episodes storytelling oxygen is the focus on those outside the labs. The parallel hierarchy of wives is seen through the eyes of Charlie’s initially bewildered wife, Abby (Rachel Brosnahan, now star of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), while the thorniest presence is that of Frank’s wife, botanist Liza (Olivia Williams). There are bored guards, Mexican domestic workers, and you soon realise it’s not the best place for a teenager itching for independence – perhaps that applies for everyone swallowed up by this nightmarish quest. As with another series from that era that recently came to streaming, Halt and Catch Fire [full review here], this is not a program to binge. But if you want to commit to a skilfully made drama that slowly accumulates insight and intrigue, this Manhattan is a worthy project.
Pale Rider: Benedict Cumberbatch (Phil Burbank) in The Power of the Dog
THE POWER OF THE DOG (Netflix, 2021, 126 minutes): With her masterful new film, Jane Campion reclaims the western, viewing the cowboy legacy through a psychological lens that matches the stunning vistas and stoic masculinity to repressed desire and maternal sacrifice. On the vast 1925 Montana ranch they run, brothers Phil and George Burbank (Benedick Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons respectively) still share a room – the former is a martinet who has driven away everyone but his gentle sibling, who he both dominates and dismisses. Campion captures the group dynamic of a male realm, detailing the daily endeavours of Phil and his devoted “crew”, but his world is ruptured when George marries Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), a widow with a teenage son, Peter (Kodi Smit McPhee). Phil’s campaign to break Rose is at the forefront of Cumberbatch’s immense performance – even his saddle-shaped walk is evocative – but there’s nothing cold about the story of thwarted possession that unfolds. With its stunning nocturnal blue tones shot by Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner, the film is rife with emotion: acts of kindness acquire a staggering force as it moves towards an unexpected finale.
New on SBS on Demand: Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, 114 minutes) is a bittersweet romantic drama about Black life in 1970s New York where a young woman (Kiki Layne) desperately tries to prove the innocence of the man (Stephan James) she loves amidst visually rapturous longing and torment.
New on Stan: Jake Gyllenhaal will never again perfectly inhabit a role the way he does in Dan Gilroy’s compelling Nightcrawler (2014, 118 minutes), playing a corrupted cameraman and self-improvement sociopath let loose in Los Angeles; William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973, 122 minutes) is still the epitome of nightmarish horror – you have been warned.
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