*The Many Saints of Newark*

Much better than its reviews, though the drama only works for those with an intricate knowledge of The Sopranos proper, and perhaps of Northern New Jersey as well.  The performances are uniformly excellent and the historical detail remarkable (where did they get that Bamberger’s delivery truck?  The store disappeared in 1986.)  The younger versions of the characters are simply uncannily accurate, though perhaps young Carmela struck me as a bit too modern looking?  I view the core theme as one of unfreedom and determinism.  As a viewer, you see the characters as unfree because you already know what is going to happen to them.  As the story unfolds, you see how much they are unfree in a more fundamental sense as well.  No one talks conceptually, except for the uncle in prison, who also is the only free person in the story.  Recommended, but probably for the dedicated only.  To really follow and understand the film, you need to have all the images of the earlier Sopranos scenes, including settings and not just characters, filed away in your mind.

Comments

Comments for this post are closed