After a second season battered by critics, which made Nic Pizzolatto the laughingstock of the industry, the creator of True Detective redeemed himself with a third season headed by Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff. It was not at the level of the inaugural cosmic horror with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey but it served to eliminate the shadow of suspicion around him: whether the series had been a stroke of luck inflated by the talent of director Cary Fukunaga, a skillful creator of poetic, macabre and suffocating atmospheres.
Pizzolatto once again had the trust of HBO to write new installments but, as if he had had enough of clearing his good name, he left the prestigious channel to sign for FX, owned by Disney. Another thing is that HBO wanted to abandon such a recognizable brand in times of attracting and retaining subscribers and, after sitting with different scriptwriters, bought the vision of Issa López, the Mexican filmmaker who had attracted attention with the horror story Vuelven.
With the title True Detective: Polar Night, the series broadcast on HBO Max and Movistar Plus takes the action to the most remote area of ??Alaska, where a mining population lives affected by the social and climatic conditions: the polar cold, the eternal night winter, the alcoholism of the inhabitants and the discrimination of the native community. Tradition collides with capitalist interests: extraction, according to some, is behind the health problems of the natives, with a higher rate of cancer and babies dying during pregnancy.
When the eight scientists at the Tsalal Arctic Research Station disappear without a trace, with a human tongue found at the center, detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) are forced to cooperate: the disappearance could be related with the brutal murder of a young native, a case in which they worked together and which led them to openly hate each other.
Polar Night is perceived as a continuation of True Detective. There is the dynamic of the tortured detectives and the aesthetic view of violence, with a disturbing human sculpture that offers one of the most terrifying moments of the season. Symbols appear along the path of the detectives that force them to contemplate the supernatural as a possibility. The pace is slow, marked by the ghosts and traumas that the characters carry.
The main defect, in fact, derives from its coherence with the True Detective universe: a sense of importance and anguish at times as conscious as it is burdensome, which does not help to grease the pieces and clues that pile up during the story. Existentialism doesn’t have to be. What is interesting about López’s exercise, however, is her ability to transform an essentially masculine universe, even accused of being misogynistic, to approach the story from a feminine perspective.
The signs go beyond the creation of Foster and Reis’ characters, who exhibit a vibrant and relentless energy that should force the industry to rethink the meaning of femininity in audiovisuals. The decorum in showing the body of the murdered young woman is commendable, for example, and it is no coincidence that, following the clues of the investigation, Navarro enters a maternity center, where a woman is in full labor.
López denounces domestic violence and the way in which the system especially despises those who belong to minorities, but, even focusing on these issues, she prevents female characters from being seen only as victims. She has merit in using True Detective to show the kaleidoscopic nature of the feminine without, unlike other contemporary works, falling into overexplanatory and sociological lessons.
And, for those who fear poorly solved mysteries, True Detective: Polar Night offers a 75-minute final episode that is tension, terror, emotion and the culmination of what was proposed.
