The telling of a story is a powerful thing. It gives substance to the characters and legitimises their story, sometimes a story that has been subjected to being viewed through a false lens. The actor Adjoa Andoh, interviewed recently in the
Financial Times, puts it so well: 'People quite often don't get their stories told. There is some strata of people who get their stories iterated and reiterated in various formats, and then some people just disappear off the map'.
No-one who has watched
The English, perhaps the best series of 2022 on the BBC, is likely ever to forget this story written and directed by Hugo Blick. Some have referred to it as a 'blood-soaked western', so it would be good to get this out of the way. Yes, absolutely, it is violent in parts (turn away briefly) but without the violence in this period of the American west, the 1890s, it would be a pale and insipid, unrealistic tale indeed.
Blick is an interesting writer and director; sometimes it seems as if he is drawn to telling about the lives of those who are seen as 'other', such as in the series concerning the Rwanda genocide,
Black Earth Rising, starring Michaela Coel. In the case of
The English, the background to the story is the massacre of the Native Americans, at this period now meant to be a thing of the past, and the failure of the government to honour its promise of land for their settlement.
This is a subversion of the usual western theme, in that it is a Native American, a former Pawnee scout for the US Cavalry, who is heroic: Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), a man who needs to rebuild his identity, having left the Army with conflicted feelings about being Pawnee, who previously took a role antipathetic to his own people. All he wants is to have a land claim of his own, without conflict.
This is not to be, for he crosses paths with Lady Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt) who is on her own search: revenge, justice for the death of her son. They converge in Hoxem, Wyoming, a town, if you can call it that, built over the remains of a massacre, where keeping law and order is attempted by Sheriff Robert Marshall (Stephen Rae).
This period in American frontier history is the edge of when the country begins to embrace the rule of law, and it is a very close thing. There were powerful forces that would have had it otherwise; there are riches to be seized, usually through the rule of the gun. This is repellently personified in the character of David Melmont (Rafe Spall), evil betrayer.
The English is a wonderful watch. The filming is astonishingly beautiful, with saturated colours, long shadows, scenery (it is filmed in Spain) that would make you rush to the travel agent. This is owed to the cinematography of Arnau Valls Colomer, whose work is so well known. The long shots give a sense of how empty, how without protection, this landscape appears. In a way, this positions the characters as isolated themselves, not a part of family or with friends. And then, the close ups are colourful, expressive and intimate, lingering.
One must comment here also on the costumes: Cornelia does seem to wear the same dress into ribbons, but this is because both Whipp and Cornelia truly live in their clothes, they 'are' their clothes. Whipp's Native American clothing details, his old Army jacket, for instance, are as much a part of them as if they exist only in what they stand up in. The costume designer, Phoebe DeGave (
Killing Eve) astounds. It also is an expression of the philosophy of the story, that all one really needs is what can be packed on a horse.
Whose story is being told, who is being put onto a map, as Andoh calls it? Both Eli and Cornelia are victims of a society that sees them as lesser beings, she because she is a woman and he because he is not white. In this, Blick mines a modern seam of racism and imperialism, and at times with the dialogue, when his characters speak to each other of their deepest feelings.
The English feels very current. The personal loss for each is overpowering – a way of life, family, a child – and gradually, as they come to trust each other, their relationship develops in a way in which each will restore the other to a kind of wholeness, a sense of goodness in humanity that has eluded them. Of course, this is a love. It is an antidote to the perfidy of the world that they have experienced.
Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer take the viewer on a western ride like no other, where stories cross and flashbacks fill in details, and on the way there are tales that supplement the main search for truth and justice, all of which give credence to what otherwise would appear to be an impossible search, with two people from opposite ends of the earth. That they reach an understanding of each other, that they can share their dearest talismans, gives
The English a resolution that is at once positive but poignant.
