Carnivale Reappraised

So, it's five years since Carnivale shrugged off their airwaves and all this talk of it in Rain Dogs thread got me into the mood to bust out my DVD Boxsets and go back to the show. Even after just watching the pilot I'm blown away by how beautiful this show looked and the quality of performance the show was able to draw out of people.

In fact at the moment Clancy Brown and Nick Stahl are the only two who seem a bit out of place, but that's largely because Stahl's got to deal with the 'dangerous outsider' aspect of his entrance and Brown is forced to be somewhat muted by the needs of his character arc. But everyone else just fits perfectly and the mythology, even as someone who knows what is going to happen, is done with so much conviction its still kind of enthralling.

This show must have cost an absolute fortune to pull together and I'm still in awe of Daniel Knauf managing to secure a budget for a show which is probably as niche as you're going to get. I'm only one episode in and already the show feels denser than a lot of its contemporaries.

There kind of is and there isn't. The series was set up with the idea of a six season, three chapter run, with each chapter covering a certain point of time and having a definitive start and end point. We got the, satisfying, conclusion to the first chapter but the bigger story was vaguely left hanging.

It is a fantastic performance, but it takes a few episodes for his character to fully come into his own. I think once you've had the church burnt down he starts down that path and his reading of excerpts from the Bible in the introduction to the Babylon episodes sort of cements him as being one of the driving forces in the series. It's kind of a shame because Brown is so great that by the time you get to Season 2, even though Stahl is doing excellent work himself, you're drawn more to Justin than you are to Ben.

I just checked on wikipedia and the budget was nuts, like the cost of a small feature film per episode. No wonder the thing looked so good.

Season 2 is brilliant and Stahl becomes a lot more interesting and personable in it. But once again Clancy Brown is the dominant force in Season 2 and at times he's legitimately fucking terrifying.

So seen as I'm a massive egoist and all, I thought I'd throw together some thoughts for each episode of Carnivale I see.

1.1: Milfay

* The set up of Ben and Justin is really great, if a little on the nose. I love that Ben is essentially a sweet, kind, nurturing sort of person, who has had to bury that part of himself to survive whilst Justin fights to maintain the facade of peacefulness and kindness.
* Ben's moment with the grieving mother is still one of my favourite character beats and it goes a long way to making him more likeable as the series goes on.
* I love how Clancy Brown really plays Brother Justin as almost 'getting off' on the biblical punishment, for a moment he's embracing the fire and brimstone old testamentness and it's only when he has to time to think about what's going that he allows himself to be compassionate. It's interesting because the first time I saw the series I always assumed that Justin was a good man getting eaten inside by his potential to be a prophet, watching it with hindsight you can still see the conflict but you can also see the man that he will become just under the surface.
* I love how Brother Justin not only wears the most threatening vestments you could imagine but he presides over his flock on a throne, the camera angles really highlight this 'regal' element of the character
* For a show famous for being so slow burn it is really odd that Sophie's third scene is her attempted rape. It's odd because it doesn't really seem to impact her character arc much and seems to be purely their for the purpose of getting Ben back to the Carnivale and in peoples good books.
* The scene outside Mr. Chin's is still one of my favourite moments from Season 1, it's just got this over the top baroque quality to it which really sells you on Justin's darkness. The snow turning to blood is such an obviously ominous symbol but he takes it as a standard communication from the lord.
* Lodz is an odd character because really I never quite understood what the show wanted from him. He doesn't really fill out the cast as an atmosphere kind of character like most of the rousties, but his place in the mythology is sketchy at best. If he's designed to be an intoloper then he plays it perfectly, it's just odd having a character who doesn't fit easily into any facet of the show.


1.2: After the Ball is Over

* It's interesting that Justin and Ben essentially start out with one power that is similar. They both seem to be able to make people comprehend themeselves, but whilst Ben is more understated Justin once again uses his skill like an old testament angry god. With Ben its enlightenment, the woman coming to the realisation that the baby is dead, with Justin its a forced lesson, Templeton having to accept the visceral horror of what he does.
* Clancy Brown plays that scene perfectly, his gnashing punchy words mixing together the ideas of a sermon and a conman. Once again he relishes the chance to exert power over someone else, even if his ultimate aim is 'good'
* It's also interesting seeing the hierarchal structures in both 'settlements'. It's more obvious at the church, but the way the Carnivale folks seperate themselves from regular folks is kind of interesting.
* The only production issue I ever had with the show was the obviously studio filmed look of the First World War stuff. It still bothers me a bit, but it lends into this sense of theatricality which all of the flashbacks seem to have.
* What's impressive is that the show feels fully in charge of its mythology already, it knows the pieces, it knows the twists, it knows what its characters has to do and as such it can drop hints and moments in those 'flashes' which only really start to make sense towards the end of the season and in one case towards the end of the series itself.