Deadwood

I watched "Deadwood", the series, much more recently than their production date (2004-2006). Which offered me some decent continuity for "Deadwood: The Movie", released this year by HBO. I'm not gonna make some complete description of all the story - despite the fact that's a relative short TV show at 3 seasons, there's still plenty of content there. However, I thought it deserves an entry, especially for the movie set at 13 years after the initial ending, which in the very narrow niche of "extra closures" for various series it's probably an example of "how to do it". Or at least a very interesting approach in an impossible context, out of which many screenwriters could take some lessons (not that I'm watching many series, but I felt the need for a while to make some counter reference to the last episode of GoT... especially after being nominated for an Emmy for best writing...).

So, to make it short, the context of the series is the life in a small settlement near some gold mining area, Deadwood, somewhere in South Dakota, close to the end of the 19th century. And in the last episode from 2006, everything is ended in what's pretty much the series semi-gloomy tone, something like: life is tough and happy-ends are fairy tales. More precisely, one of the main characters, Al Swearengen, owner of a "saloon" and a pillar of making things working in the community, has to kill one of his "world's oldest profession” employees, an innocent woman, in order to save another who tried to murder a wealthy businessman, George Hearst. A magnate, who using some unorthodox methods (= via contract killers) wants to take over the entire place. As I was saying, there's no time to get into much more other soapy details, but one thing is essential: Deadwood is real. The place exists. The history of the place exists. Many of the series characters were real. And if the life and ending of some got lost in time, leaving room for "romancing" it on TV, in some other cases doing that is not easy. George Hearst in particular, the main villain towards the series ending, was one of the richest men in the US at that time, getting to be a senator, and being the father of probably the more famous William Randolph Hearst, a press tycoon, and the inspiration for "Citizen Kane". If he was so evil as "Deadwood" suggests, I have no clue... But that's what the screenwriters chose, and the last series had to end with Hearst doing well and leaving the community smiling, while the people left behind are more or less agonizing after his actions. If you're not Tarantino in "Inglorious Basterds", it's hard to rewrite the history radically and put in the movie a happy end vendetta vs. somebody who lived many more years after briefly passing through Deadwood.

Unfortunately, this total lack of happy-end yearns for some other kind of closure, which as I was saying, in the historical context, seems somehow impossible. Well, after many years, the same screenwriters found a way, and like that we got "Deadwood: The Movie", where suprise, surprise, 10 year in the movie after the latest events, the villain is still George Hearst, coming back to Deadwood, still for business and still using the approach of "who doesn't breath anymore, cannot say no anymore". Only that this time, we have the payback. Without rewriting history, although probably that part is not in the history books :). I won't give spoilers, but the way the movie manages to close some narrative threads is... let's say surprisingly pleasing, and it's not about a happy-end, because there's not 100% like that. And again, this works in a context adapted from real facts with limitations, not in a fantasy where you can write whatever you want ( couldn't help it :) ).