talyseon's Full Review: Carnivale - The Complete First Season
Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.
Carnivàle (2003) Created by Daniel Knauf
Samson: Lyle, I'm tellin' you this operation is 100% legit. Sheriff Lyle Donovan: I never heard an honest man use "legit".
Okie Gothic. Dustbowl Noir. Twin Peaks in Texas. What to call the HBO Series about a very unusual traveling side show? Sexy Soap Opera in need of soap? Supernatural Drama? History Horror? Maybe a little of all these things. The David Lynchesque drama follows the exploits of Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl) as he leaves behind his dead mother, repossessed farm, and leg iron, and joins up with a traveling Carnival, with some very unusual features. Honestly, the bisexual lizard man known as the Gecko (John Fleck) and the conjoined twins Alexandria and Caladonia (Karyne and Sarah Steben) are among the least unusual people there. There is Apollonia (Diane Salinger) the telekinetic and telepathic catatonic, and her daughter Sophie, (Clea Du Vall) who uses her ability to hear her mother's thought to translate what she sees in the cards. There is the alluring cougar Ruthie (Adrienne Barbeau) who can dance with serpents or shill her son Gabriel (Brian Turk) the strong man, as simple as he is massive. There is the Boss, Samson, (Michael J. Anderson) a dwarf, and then there is Management, who never leaves his trailer. Even the most normal seeming people, the Hoochie Cootch operators, are an incredibly dysfunctional family; Daddy "Stumpy" Dreyfus barks while momma Rita Sue (Cynthia Ettinger) dances the Cootch with darling daughters Libby (Carla Gallo) and Dora Mae (Amanda Aday). After hours, Rita Sue tricks Johns. Jonesy (Tim McKay) is the chief rousty, with an interesting story as to how his leg got in the brace, and wearing his heart on his sleeve over Sophie. Professor Lodz (Patrick Bauchau) is a blind mentalist, whose psychometry can be a landmine, and who is playing games with people's lives. His lover/henchman, is Lila (Debra Christofferson), the Bearded Lady.
Ben is eagerly awaited at Carnivàle; Ben has powers, powers to heal the sick, and even revive the dead; but at a price. And there are those who want to use him. The question is, who are they? And do any of them have his best interests at heart?
Ben's story is strangely paralleled by Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown) a Methodist minister with powers of insight that are terrifying to behold. Led by his visions, he and his sister Iris (Amy Madigan) start a ministry for the Okies displaced into refugee camps come to California to escape the Dustbowl. His good deeds lead them down dark paths indeed.
Set against the back drop of the Great Depression, it is a hardscrabble life for everyone. For the Carnies of Carnivàle they are one night's proceeds away from hunger, time and time again. Their lives are hard, pitching the camp, setting up the fairway, working the marks for what pennies they can get, and then breaking it all down again, to move on and do it all over the next day. The main recreation is smokin' drinkin' and fornicatin' or planning on fornicatin' or speculatin' on who's fornicatin' whom.
The entire production is shot in a sort of Depressorama. The historical detail is wonderful; the effect matches the pictures from the Dustbowl. There is a dullness to the colours; everything is muted by hard wear, hard washing, and hard driven dust. Much of it has a sepia tone that has little to do with the filters, and a lot to do with the atmosphere. It conspires to create an air of bleakness that is hard to describe, and hard to endure. And yet it is the perfect canvas upon which to paint this Hieronymus Bosch portrait of the Great Depression.
Carnivàle won five Emmys. It won nine other awards, and was nominated for a further twenty five. It combines superlative writing, award winning cinematography, and amazing actors in a plot as convoluted and as dark as the human heart. It only lasted two seasons, but, oh, what a ride.
This review, like Henry Scudder, is Lean-N-Mean. It weighs in at a concise 666 words, very apropos to the subject.
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