“There’s still hope.”
“Hope is irrelevant.”
The Well is a strange and triumphant exercise, a collection of contradictions that coheres remarkably well.
It is a chamber piece, a very basic Doctor Who story that could easily have been executed on the classic BBC budget, blown up with Disney+ money. It is a very obvious sequel to at least one beloved story from Davies’ original tenure as showrunner, and saturated with references to others, while still feeling undeniably like a produce of his second era overseeing the show. It is an exercise in nostalgia, but also a story about how that nostalgia is cursed. It is also Russell T. Davies revisiting his early work, while taking cues from Steven Moffat.
All’s well…
It shouldn’t work. The Well should collapse under its own weight. It should feel like an indulgent mess, a collection of clashing recycled imagery and iconography. However, The Well manages to strike a very careful balance between its competing priorities, allowing the individual elements to add up to more than the sum of its individual parts. It’s an episode that feels like an extension of Davies work in both The Robot Revolution and Lux, solidifying a rich thematic vein running through the first three stories of the season.
The Well is a remarkable accomplishment.
Spaced out…
Filed under: Television | Tagged: alien, continuity, creature, disney, doctor who, hard sci-fi, hard science-fiction, memory, metaphor, Midnight, ncuti gatwa, nostalgia, russell t. davies, sequel, the doctor, the well, varada sethu | 2 Comments »
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422. Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) (#228)
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week with special guest Ingrid Machado, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.
This week, Walter Salles’ Ainda Estou Aqui.
In 1970s Brazil, the Paiva family lives a charmed and tranquil existence. As the country around them slips into dictatorship, the family has managed to hold on to something close to normality. However, that peaceful life is suddenly and brutally shattered as the outside world comes crashing in.
At time of recording, it was ranked 228th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: "I'm Still Here", Andrew Quinn, brazil, cultural relevance, emotional depth, Fernanda Torres, imdb, ingird machado, Ingrid Machado, memory, military dictatorship, Movie, podcast, political issues, relevance, social commentary, The 250, trauma, Walter Salles | Leave a comment »