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Screens
We know drama (and this ain't it)

By Elaine Wolff

06/09/2005

TNT brings the famous monotony of rolling prairie grass to the screen

"It took him an hour-and-a-half to hack through the bone, but by that time
Rachel had died."

Your gut reaction to that revelation, uttered by "Episode-1" narrator Jacob
Wheeler, is a good indication whether you will find Into the West, the TNT
network's six-episode drama that premieres this weekend, a gripping
retelling of American history or a cure for that persistent insomnia.

How do you make a boring movie about Westward expansion? The American years
between 1825 and 1890 not only were some of the most exciting that history
has to offer - cultural and ideological conflict and warfare, technological
innovation, the mass movement of populations - but also became the crucible
in which a developing democracy's identity was forged: The U.S. would be a
nation in which humanity's highest ideals (to date) for and estimation of
the individual would constantly jostle for primacy with greed.

To spin this yarn, which encompasses the Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail, the
completion of the continental railroad, and the Battle of Wounded Knee, TNT
has amassed six directors, a multi-ethnic cast of hundreds, and enough
livestock to repopulate North Dakota - all under the tutelage of Executive
Producer Steven Spielberg. How exciting is that?

Judging by episodes 1 and 2, not very damn exciting at all. Watching Into
the West is like taking your vitamins without water. TNT has produced a
number of post-Manifest Destiny Western specials and they begin here with
an admirable idea: to tell the story of the clash between Euro-American
expansion and Native American culture with equal respect for the Native
Americans' point of view and values. To do so, they enlisted a team of
advisors that included a professor from Oglala Lakota College and George P.
Horse Capture, senior counselor to the director and special assistant for
cultural relations at the National Museum of the American Indian. Why then
do the meticulously (and, I imagine, expensively) recreated scenes play so
awkwardly? Even the actors who portray Lakota tribespeople don't seem to be
entirely convinced of their own authenticity. Part of the fault lies with
the filmmakers who decided that these scenes require more narration than
the all-white scenes. The unintentional effect is to make the Native
Americans seem childlike and deserving of patronization.

Excessive narration is the Achilles' heel of Into the West. The "Story
Angles" sheet enclosed in the press kit helpfully suggests, "Into the West
is not a 'Western,' but rather a story about the West." The plot takes two
extended families, the pioneer Wheelers and the the Lakota Tribe, and
intermarry them to make several points. But Into the West never rises to
the level of story; it's a series of vignettes strung together with
extraneous, clunky voiceover, the above example of which is not the most
egregious by far. It's impossible to care about the characters any more
than one cares about the "re-enactors" in those anesthetized
public-television dramatizations - soap-operatic twists a la Ciderhouse
Rules notwithstanding. There is so little suspense that when lovely Rachel
Wheeler's leg is crushed by a runaway wagon, her abrupt death by gangrene
and brute surgery is a foregone conclusion. TNT wants to have its pemmican
and eat it, too. Imagine Ken Burns writing a Western telenovela and you get
a sense of the scope of the problem. Is Into the West a docu-drama? Then,
please, bring on the drama. Less digitized buffalo herds - more acting.

Underlying Into the West's irritating narration is an assumption even more
deadly to compelling storytelling: The filmmakers have decided who the bad
and good guys are. At the risk of comparing apples and oranges, let's
consider Deadwood for a moment, the crass and thrilling HBO series based
loosely on the historic South Dakota town and its many infamous
inhabitants, circa 1879. As many an appreciative fan and critic has
noticed, Deadwood's characters are morally complicated, if not downright
ambiguous; they argue for their own worth through their actions. The viewer
must decide how to interpret and judge them. When the Hearst agent with the
Jack-the-Ripper complex swung from a balcony at the end of season two, it
wasn't to appease the moralists in the audience (although we were certainly
gratified). Next season, HBO executives willing, we'll find out whether he
was a murder victim to protect his employer's reputation, or a suicide
because he couldn't bear his surrogate father's rejection.

In place of such obscenely real moral conundrums, Into the West gives us
brief speeches from lascivious frontiersmen hoping to snag some Indian
action or a Native-American medicine man whose visions tell him that his
people's Wheel of Life will be crushed by a wheel of steel. That's an
allegory worth building an epic, circular story around, but what comes out
of the studio's intestines instead is a big buffalo chip. It's not
worthless, but there certainly are more pleasant ways to burn a few hours.
•

By Elaine Wolff

©San Antonio Current 2005