Binge-r #238: Shadow and Bone + Rutherford Falls
Let There Be Light: Jessie Mei Li (Alina) and Ben Barnes (Kirigan) in Shadow and Bone
SHADOW AND BONE S1
Streaming Service: Netflix
Availability: All eight episodes now streaming
Netflix has doubled down this last year on youthful fantasy dramas with a period setting (good work algorithm!), mostly to middling effect; The Irregulars isn’t irrelevant, but it isn’t great. At first glance the streaming service’s latest iteration, Shadow and Bone, ticks the now familiar boxes, starting with a successful trilogy of fantasy novels by Leigh Bardugo as the source material, and folding in a young and resilient hero, fervent looks meant to set hearts racing, and a magical system that creates cliques, cabals, and conspiracies. But to put it simply, with virtually every criteria Shadow and Bone delivers more than you expect: the world-building provides a mystical hum, the design departments do evocative work (if you have a vintage uniform fetish you will be in heaven), and the central characters have some genuine spark. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the early episodes.
Much credit to creator Eric Heisserer, best known for adapting Arrival, who has delivered a realm literally divided by darkness, and then shown how that can corrupt every element of life. Modelled on Tsarist Russia – peasant blouses, Cyrillic typography, and Rasputin-worthy beards – the Kingdom of Ravka has been ruptured for centuries by The Fold, a dark zone between east and west filled with monsters who take many who risk the crossing. Even those with magical powers, the Grisha, struggle to stay alive, which makes the initial traversal of orphanage-raised best friends and now young conscripts, Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and Malyen Oretsev (Archie Renaux), all the more terrifying at the first instalment’s finale.
It would not be a spoiler to say that in desperation Alina, who has spent her life hunkered down to avoid discrimination, reveals prophesised powers during their voyage. The Chosen One is a fantasy trope, but Heisserer upends it in concert with a terrific performance by Li, who delivers wary defiance instead of heroic destiny. On the other side of The Fold a complementary plot involving a young crime boss, Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter), and his crew trying to find a way to cross, opens up the underworld even as Alina is seized upon by the head of the Grisha, General Kirigan (Ben Barnes, introduced by some exemplary cape work), who wants to harness her nascent power. If you don’t like this genre, Shadow and Bone may still leave you cold, but its balance of cheekbones and intrigue, passion and arcane detail, ties together exceptionally well. Mixing Doctor Zhivago and The Last Airbender really does work.
Losing Your Marble: Ed Helms (Nathan), Dana L. Wilson (Deidre) and Jana Schmieding (Reagan) in Rutherford Falls
RUTHERFORD FALLS (Stan, all 10 episodes now streaming): Ruefully amusing but keenly observed within its comic parameters, Rutherford Falls is an update on co-creator Michael Schur’s optimistic studies of human decency that include Parks and Recreation and The Good Place. Here, with star Ed Helms and Sierra Teller Ornelas as co-creators, the setting is a bucolic American town where the privileged Nathan Rutherford (Helms) has to confront modern realities when the mayor, Deidre Chisenhall (Dana L. Wilson) wants to move an inconvenient situated statue of his forebear, who founded the community. Alongside his best friend, Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding), Nathan bumbles into contemporary power structures – the area’s economic force is a Native American casino, whose tribe members include Reagan. Ornelas and a cohort of writers are Native American, which sidesteps outdated clichés and ensures that the series doesn’t have a villain, just a diverse group of Americans whose differing outlooks are navigated by compromise and not confrontation. It’s a small show, but not without possibilities.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: A Melissa McCarthy comedy written and directed by her husband, Ben Falcone, is a test of whether her unstoppable comic persona can overcome formulaic material: Thunder Force (2021, 107 minutes) barely passes it; Soylent Green (1973, 96 minutes) is the original dystopian nightmare of an ecologically bankrupt future, set in an overcrowded 2022 with Charlton Heston as a dogged police detective alongside the Hollywood Golden Age great Edward G. Robinson in his final role.
New on Stan: Gus Van Sant’s breakthrough and a landmark American independent feature, Drugstore Cowboy (1989, 102 minutes) stars a never better Kelly Lynch and Matt Dillon in a 1970s drug milieu drama that has lived-in insight; Baby Done (2020, 92 minutes) is a somewhat episodic and often funny commitment comedy from New Zealand with Rose Matafeo as an unimpressed mother-to-be.
New on SBS on Demand: The directorial debut of actor Clea DuVall (who made The Happiest Season last year), The Intervention (2016, 87 minutes) is a relationship drama about a couples’ weekend away that deftly turns into a titular confrontation for one pair – a cast that includes DuVall, Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, Natasha Lyonne, and Ben Schwartz skilfully make the dynamic plausible and the realisations resonate.
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