Wen 丨 Wu Zeyuan
The seven-episode miniseries "East Side Nightmare" recently ended. Despite HBO's halo bonus and Kate Winslet's superb performance, the show's closing episode can crush the HBO Max server and score a high score of 9.1 on Douban, which is still unanticipated.
When the plot dust settles, we can finally take stock of this drama that combines small-town style and suspenseful plot. The murderer of the young girl Ellen is revealed, and the families and individuals affected by this case are back on track at the end of the series. Can this ending meet the expectations of fans? How does it lead us to examine the show as a whole?
The radicalism of "East Side Nightmare": the most humane suspense drama
I believe that by now, all the audiences who know a little about "East Side Nightmare" are already familiar with its plot premise: in the pennsylvania town of "East Side", Ellen, who is both a single mother and a 17-year-old girl, died tragically at gunpoint in the middle of the night.
Mel, the town detective played by Kate Winslet, begins to investigate the case, but she gradually discovers that the town acquaintances she has known for many years are now almost invariably lying to her or hiding something. Everyone is a potential suspect, everyone's lies have their own purpose, and Only through his own experience and intuition can Mel clear the fog and see the truth.
Small towns and murders are two classic elements that make a legendary American drama. The plot premise of "East Side Nightmare" can indeed remind us of a series of popular American dramas: "Twin Peaks", "True Detective", "Sharp Weapon", "Murder"... Edgar Allen Poe once said that the death of a teenage girl is the most poetic and tragic topic in the world. And the human hearts, desires and sins that are masked by the appearance of a peaceful town reflected through this tragedy are also the material that a group portrait drama cannot ask for.
East Side Nightmare follows this classic pattern. In this small town with small circles and intricate human relations, no one is completely innocent when a crime occurs. Ellen's alcoholic father Kenny committed negligence, Ellen's cousin John took advantage of ellen's pubertal confusion; John's brother Billy and his wife Lori both cheated on Mel in order to cover up the ugly truth; Ellen's ex-boyfriend Dylan allowed his current girlfriend to punch and kick Ellen; even Mel's ex-husband and the town's church deacon would hide the truth in order to separate relations with the case, and the girl's soul could not rest in the lie.
But What makes East Side Nightmare unique is that it doesn't exaggerate the evils mentioned above. Instead, its focus is on the daily life of families and individuals in the play, using the murder as an incision to examine the parents of all the living units in the town.
We see the apparently dysfunctional father-daughter relationship between Kenny and Ellen, the one-way brotherhood between John and Billy, and the co-working relationship between priest and deacon oscillating between trust and doubt. But what underpins these difficult relationships is either blood kinship or love based on shared beliefs and ideals. Their base color is temperature-dependent.
The family with the most ink in the whole play is naturally the protagonist Mel's family. Her family story is complex: both father and son commit suicide due to mental illness; although she and her mother are happy and wronged, there is always an inexplicable layer of mustard; and there is also an unspoken tension between her and her daughter because of the death of a common relative. The only relative she can care for without reservation is her young grandson, but she is fighting with her grandson's mother for custody, and she is at risk of losing her loved one at any time.
For all these parents, the short performance even overshadows the case itself in the middle of the episode. But this does not detract from the charm of the whole series; it can even be said that they are the charm of the show. Through a collection of small-town families, "East Side Nightmare" establishes a representative sociological specimen in which the conflict between jurisprudence and human feelings, the collision of public interests and private emotions, is particularly powerful.
As a suspense drama, the humor index of "East Side Nightmare" is even a little overshoot. The most eye-catching character in the play, Mel's mother, Helen, has a big grinning personality, an almost neurotic and outspoken attitude towards her daughter, and an overzealous and gossipy spirit that is difficult to sustain herself when facing her daughter's date, all of which reflect the human touch and real texture of small american town life. These details may remain in the audience's mind longer than the facts of the case itself.
In terms of aesthetic style, "East Side Nightmare" does not try to take the sword to the side. Its narrative of the plot is flat and direct, and its audiovisual language is extremely simple, even a little flat and ugly. It does not have the fantasy color of "Twin Peaks", does not have the southern brother characteristics and philosophical speculation of "True Detective", and does not have the unforgettable fragmented psychological narrative of "Sharp Weapon".
But looking back, isn't deliberately avoiding creating a recognizable style also a clear style choice? Through those cheesy wallpapers, old clothes, and flat light, "Nightmare in the East Side" is trying to restore the original face of the small town in the northeast of the United States. It may lack luster like Kate Winslet's unpopular face, but it is an honest entry point into small-town American life.
The Conservatism of East Side Nightmare: The Sin of Over-Convergence
Winslet's performance is undoubtedly the soul of the big heroine of "East Side Nightmare". Her role as Mel seems to act bluntly, but in fact she knows a lot about human nature; her questioning of suspects and the planting of people she does not trust are sometimes almost cynical, but when you think about it carefully, you will find that at least in matters related to the public interest, Mel is never ambiguous, and everything she does, whether bold or not, absurd or not, is out of love for this community.
In fact, aside from Mel's maternal, daughter, and grandmother attributes, as well as a personal traumatic thread that the screenwriter has given her, Mel's character is not much different from the sheriff and sheriff played by Henry Fonda or John Wayne in classic Hollywood Westerns. They are the guardians of the public good, the guardians of order. Eastwood, another famous cowboy in film history, once said through the character' mouth: "There are three kinds of people in the world: sheep, wolves, and shepherds." Mel would probably agree with that.
But one of the big problems with East Side Nightmare is that there is a lack of wolves fierce enough to compete with Mel, the shepherd. Well, the teenage girl prisoners who appear in episodes four and five are certainly of the highest caliber, but the character comes and goes so quickly that the whole scene in which he confronts the police, and the bridge in which he shoots Colin (Evan Peters) to death, seems like something the writers added on an improvised basis after discovering that the crisis index of the whole show was insufficient.
After removing the perverted man who imprisoned the girl, "East Side Nightmare" no longer has a role that can really be cruel to others. John wants to kill his brother but can't do it; Ellen's ex-boyfriend Dylan wants to strangle Ellen's child who has nothing to do with him, but in the end he finds out in his inexplicable conscience. As for the real murderer of Ellen, he finally appears after the layers of reversal in the seventh episode: Ryan, a boy who has collapsed after discovering that his father John has an affair with Ellen. He didn't want to kill Ellen—it was just a shot in the air.
So, when we see through the illogical tricks that the screenwriter deliberately created (Dylan burned Ellen's diary in order to fight for custody of the child he wanted to strangle not long ago?). WTF) after that, you will find that the most brutal passage in the whole play is nothing more than a few punches and kicks left by Dylan's current girlfriend Brianna on Ellen's head, and the town youth beating suffered by deacon John. The latter doesn't even really appear in the picture.
This makes us wonder after watching the finale: Does this little fight really need a heavyweight shepherd like Mel to come forward to settle the balance?
In fact, in addition to the plot scale, the value orientation of the "East Side Nightmare" finale is also too conservative to be more conservative:
Almost all the characters in the play finally regained their salvation in the acceptance and sacrifice of their families and loved ones.
The church deacon who threw Ellen's bicycle off the bridge, instead of being a bad guy, became the most aggrieved character in the whole play. Toward the end, he took to the stage to speak, conveying the power of Christ's symbolic love and acceptance to the entire community.
It was this speech that enlightened Mel. She understood that even if she was pushed away by her best friend again and again, she could not give up her love for her, so she ran to the home of her best friend, John's wife, Ryan's mother Lori, and embraced Lori with a gesture of mercy to the Virgin Mary.
But is this almost naked mission of Puritan values outdated in the 21st century?
Perhaps, in order to highlight the warm background in the town's interpersonal relationships, the creators of "East Side Nightmare" sacrificed too many sins. This makes the end of the series a little weaker, and there is no doubt that it is not as destructive as "Twin Peaks" and "True Detective" that questions traditional American values. Not to mention the difference between it and European film and television works, you know, Robert Bresson, who also shows the power of faith and loves to end the film with a classical religious gesture, there is no lack of real evil in the work, as well as doubts about God and self.
Maybe we need to go back to the end of the first season of True Detective and look up at the night sky. There is the ultimate light in the night sky, but the reason why it shines is because there is the ultimate darkness and the abyss.
As for the goodness that is not reflected by evil, the faith that is not questioned, and the love that is not reflected by indifference, it does not necessarily exist in reality, and in the work of art, it may be established under the use of the creator's skills, but it is only a shoe tickle on the essence of life.