"Jean-Luc Godard once said that there are two kinds of directors. The first kind knows exactly what they're looking for and always aims the camera right there. Alfred Hitchcock may be the supreme version of this. The second kind have wandering eyes that keep searching for unexpected flashes of life. That perfectly describes Sterlin Harjo, the Native American writer and director whose first TV series Reservation Dogs was one of the great shows of the new millennium."
"Would his drifty, digressive approach work with a crime story? The answer is yes. The Lowdown, as it's titled, uses its murder plot to create a world crackling with humor and sadness and, well, danger. Ethan Hawke stars as Lee Raybon, a used bookstore owner who moonlights as a muckraking reporter and calls himself a "Truthstorian." When a son of a powerful Tulsa family supposedly dies by suicide, Lee smells a rat and begins investigating."
Jean-Luc Godard's distinction between directors who aim precisely and those who wander frames Sterlin Harjo's approach. Harjo brings a wandering, digressive eye shaped by Reservation Dogs to a neo-noir set in present-day Tulsa. The Lowdown centers on Ethan Hawke's Lee Raybon, a used-bookstore owner and self-styled 'Truthstorian' whose investigation into an apparent suicide unravels power, violence and absurdity. Harjo uses a murder plot to populate a world of neo-Nazis, a slippery political scion, a mystery tail, and eccentric local figures — antiques dealers, caviar counterfeiters, hard-partying cops and a sardonic Black publisher — balancing humor, sadness and menace.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]