The pairing of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective, a gothic detective thriller set in the American Deep South, is nothing short of sensational.
Theirs is acting for the drama gourmet – with extreme conflict, philosophical headbutting, human frailty and dialogue that goes snap, crackle and pop – where Emmys and Oscars somehow seem inadequate as rewards for such career-best performances.
It’s not hyperbole to say McConaughey’s performance here outshines his Oscar-winning turn in The Dallas Buyers Club.
In North America, where this HBO anthology series reeled in 11 million viewers and just delivered its gut-punch finale to thunderous critical acclaim, Time praised the eight-part series as a “tour de force”.
The story begins in 1995 when the detectives Rustin Cohle (McConaughey) and Martin Hart (Harrelson) head into the Louisiana backwoods to the nightmarish scene of the lifeless Dora Lange, a young prostitute left kneeling, naked and trussed up with antlers on her head after her ritual killing.
The narrative, however, is spun in flashback by the older, 2012 versions of Hart and Cohle, who tell their story of the earlier investigation which may not have been solved correctly – as Cohle obsesses the real serial killer is out there still preying on children.
“It’s not like anything I’ve read or done before,” says McConaughey. “It’s really the story of what happens in these two men’s lives when they come together to solve this murder.”
“When you initially meet our characters together, there’s quite a lot of butting heads,” Harrelson says. “I’m a very sociable, gregarious person – and he’s just the opposite.”
“Cohle’s a real loner,” says McConaughey. “He’s never seeking a relationship. He’s not even a guy who wants to have a conversation in a car.”
As they chase real-life demons, what draws them to each other is that they’re both tortured souls with demons of their own – the brawling family-man Hart with his drinking and womanising and the depressive, mystical Cohle with his fixation on the nature of evil in the cosmos.
“True Detective takes the form of a manhunt,” says Nic Pizzolatto, the American novelist, screenwriter and producer who created the show for HBO. “So it’s more of a thriller than any kind of a whodunnit.”
The director Cary Joji Funukaga adds: “It’s really about two men and how they have to face who they really are.”
In the swampy spookiness of the South, along the steamy coastal plains of Louisiana where rusty refineries dot the lonely expanses of mossy bush, the bleak terrain also becomes a character that harbours dark secrets.
This isn’t New Orleans. This isn’t Bourbon Street. It’s the sticks – where anything can happen against a midnight-bayou chorus of frogs and cicadas. And, shot in 35mm film, the gritty texture of the visuals just bleeds so nicely onto the screen.
Before each day’s shooting, the production employed wranglers to remove poisonous snakes and the occasional alligator out of the crew’s way. Birds of prey, an owl and a hawk, were kept on set to keep the raucous mockingbirds from disrupting scenes.
Creepy visuals also come courtesy of the disturbing, triangular twig sculptures that the killer leaves as a calling card, along with literary references to The King in Yellow, a collection of short horror stories published by American writer Robert W Chambers in 1895 that went on to influence the likes of H P Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos.
The writing for this anthology is “as good as it gets,” says Harrelson.
Adds McConaughey: “Every time I read what came out of Rustin Cohle’s mouth, it turned me on.”
• True Detective is broadcast at 11pm tomorrow on OSN First HD
[ artslife@thenational.ae ]
