1923 S01E01: Ambitious Northwest | Lagarde

Photo credit: Paramount+

Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has been hard at work in recent years. At first he thought Yellow stone (2018-) He later wrote the prequels for this Western series: 1883 (2021-) and 1923 (2022) The series focuses on the lives of the Dutton family, who settle in the US state of Montana after wandering through Tennessee and Texas. In 1923 It shows how Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) and his wife Cara (Helen Mirren) run a large cattle farm there during their graduation year. Cows graze between the hills. But there is nothing but love in life: cattle farmers fight with each other, just like that Yellow stoneSome things never change, by land.

In addition to being a rancher, Dutton is a deputy sheriff, which comes in handy when he brings an Irish sheep farmer to justice for deliberately allowing his sheep to eat a neighbor’s green grass. All of this is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, which began earlier in Montana than in the rest of the United States. Sheridan shifts his focus to the state’s original inhabitants, who are being raised by ruthless nuns in Catholic boarding schools. In Sheridan’s work, as in American history, horrors are never far away. He wisely questions the Duttons: How did they get that land?

Who decided that they should have that wealth? 1923 In that sense, it’s similar to the other two series mentioned above about wealth distribution in America and how perverse it really is. So, a critical look at the country. But there’s something melancholy about the story: nostalgia for a time when boundaries were actually pushed back. With older actors who would have played a gunfighter or a brave wench decades ago, but now mostly play veteran-weary characters. That way it is 1923 An anti-Western.

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No wonder; Sheridan shows himself every time (cf Hell or high water2014, or The wind is the river2017) is a genre talent that surgically exposes the painful history of America’s origins.