Warning: ~Gentle~ spoilers for Mare of Easttown. I do not discuss the main plot or answers to the murder, but I do talk about the very last scene of the show.
Let's start with endings because they are almost always relegated to the last minutes of the story, except when talking about Nolan or Tarantino. Also, more sensibly put, the subject of endings is the more relevant.
I, a devoted HBO consumer, devoured every episode of Mare of Easttown (always on Monday because a ten o'clock runtime is rough), a thrilling experience only rivaled by other prestige dramas like Chernobyl and True Detective. Positively giddy throughout the whole experience—I laughed, I cried, I screamed. The mystery consumed my thoughts. More importantly, a nod to the creators, I was just as invested in the daily lives of Mare and the cast who orbit her chaotic life. I could watch Mare order a hoagie and eat it in real time with no complaints and with requests for more. I would like them to expand the Mare universe a la what Rian Johnson is doing with Craig Daniel and the Knives Out films, but I am also aware a sequel might ruin Mare’s magic because the ending is complete and perfect.
What works best is that—though ostensibly a mystery, and, yes, everything hinges on the reveals—the most important developmental factors to the plot and characters were always out in the open: we always knew Mare would have to reckon with her dead son.
When we first meet Mare (this is about endings, I promise), she is worn thin, chasing one responsibility after another. She jumps a fence, spraining her foot, and walks with a limp for much of the first two episodes. This woman is under constant pressure from her community and family, and above it all, above their heads, is the attic where her only son committed suicide. The unspoken phantom, the unthinkable truth that follows her from scene to scene. Her perceived failure as a mother is something that strains every single relationship, personal and professional. Unable to fathom acceptance, grief manifests in unhealthy ways—a singular obsession with work, emotional detachment from loved ones, and planting drugs on her grandson’s mother.
As with all great mysteries, we are given closure of the immediate questions—who, what, where, why, and how—but the proverbial (attic) door is left open to give the story the breathing room needed to live beyond our limited scope as viewers. It makes Mare feel real.
Our last shot is of Mare leaving her grandson in bed and climbing the ladder to the attic, a place she has avoided since her son's death. We know that this location is a source of shame that she has worked to overcome. We are not taken into this intimate moment, left on a slow crawl down the hallway, and, I presume, out the front door—a gentle nudge from the camera that we are no longer needed or welcome. We don't need to see anything else.
We've seen her grow, and now she climbs. I hate to leave, but I know that she will be fine.
Now for a wild shift as we head back to beginnings and learn a lesson in tone from a master scene.
I made a commitment this year to focus a lot of my cinematic viewing on female and/or foreign creators, so I did a pretentious thing and got a Criterion membership. Besides creating an air of importance and scholarship around my television watching (I promise that I still watch a lot of trash), I've found the app integral to my continuing education of the art form, and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind watching weird arthouse films that are three hours long.
During my year-long journey, I discovered one of my new favorite films, La Cienega, translated to The Swamp and directed by Lucrecia Martel. The aforementioned swamp is a popular, algae infested pool belonging to an extended family who spend summers lounging and drinking away their provincial gloom in a crumbling estate in the jungle of Argentina. Ancestral wealth is used like a benzo. There is never not a character strewn on a lawn chair or spring mattress, sweating through bathing suits or dabbing rough cut ice on the back of necks. The film primarily follows the younger generation as they navigate the cultural divides with the locals, traveling in and out of the city, but always returning to the crumbling mansion.
La Cienega is a spiritual cousin to Sofia Coppola's body of work, primarily the visuals of The Virgin Suicides and the self-inflicted malaise of Somewhere. I personally love watching films about bourgeoisie woes, but to some it can feel like a film about nothing. That nothing is integral to the story, though. A world void of challenges and passion, leaves many of the adult characters as emotionless zombies, best exemplified in the mother. The children seem destined to these unmotivated lives.
This apathy and boredom is best shown in the opening scene which you can watch below:
The first image is of red peppers laid on a stall, the family's crop and main source of income, and the second is a bright red drink poured into a crystal glass which can be interpreted as a figurative drinking away of wealth. A detached hand rings the now full glass, and sunglasses turn towards the sound. A group of sunbathers drag chairs behind them to refill their drinks. We never see the bodies whole, just bits, unflattering and uncomfortable bits that you know the characters would not want you to focus on. The sound of aluminum chair legs dragged along concrete is the opening score. These aching, drunken bodies move across the landscape at a glacial pace, neither advancing nor becoming extinct, a symbol of the dead weight of the social structure they benefit from.
It is an impressive scene. No dialogue. No context. But in those first two minutes we are given a sensory understanding of what is to come. This laissez-faire tone is often juxtaposed with the hyper stylings of the younger male cousins running through the woods with hunting rifles, barking dogs, and their shots are often heard in the distance from the pool or in a shaded bedroom, marking the disturbances below the quiet, murky surface.
When I first saw this scene, I had to pause and restart the whole thing over. I knew this was going to be a favorite without any further context of the next two hours. Martel's use of sound is often commented on, how she will continue a sound long after the source has left the screen or before it is presented. It adds new depth to the story telling, like refracted glimpses of the past or future while witnessing the present.
Both scenes require no dialogue. Their symbolism is strong.
La Cienega and Mare of Easttown exemplify the power of first and last impressions, that authenticity is not just set design or accents, but the whole and beyond to the unspoken.