Netflix’s Violent, Bloody Saga Of The American Frontier is a harrowing watch

Netflix’s new western series is a dark and bloody affair.

American Primeval pulls no punches in its six-episode limited run. Murder, rape and chaos and suicide fill this relentlessly brutal world. The only thing more deadly than the frontier itself are the men who occupy it: conniving Mormon settlers, ruthless Indian tribes, greedy bounty hunters. And a few good men and women struggling to survive amidst all the evil and depravity.

It reminded me so much of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 film Revenant, that I was not the least bit surprised to find that it was written by the same person, Mark L. Smith. However, the shared DNA between movies and limited series is evident in every image The Revenant is more focused and poetic and leans more on the caliber of its stars.

“Primordial” refers to a time before history, to the earliest days of mankind, and evokes a certain sense of raw primitiveness. It’s a fitting title for a series about the American frontier at its bloodiest and least romantic. I often thought of Thomas Hobbes’s famous quote from Leviathansuccinctly describes the world of the imagination: “No art; no letters; no society; and, worst of all, constant fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, ugly, brutal, and short.”

“There’s a difference between civilization and civilization,” Shea Whigham’s character, Jim Bridger, tells Betty Gilpin’s Sara Rowell when she finds herself at Fort Bridger, surrounded by violent and unpredictable men. “You should go back to Boston, where there is more of both.”

However, Rowell cannot go back to Boston. With a price on her head, she’s headed west with her young son, Devin (Preston Mota), to escape certain death. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Bridger introduces her to the lonely mountain man, Isaac Reed. Taylor Kitsch plays this strong and silent bearded loner and does it with a ferocity and passion that I haven’t really seen from the actor before, even though he’s had some great roles over the years. It’s all the basis of a great romance. The rugged and weathered reluctant hero. The damsel in distress. But this is not a romance, however much it plays with the idea.

There are two almost entirely separate stories at play American Primeval. The first follows Sara and Isaac on their harrowing escape across the mountains of the Utah Territory through snowy forests filled with wolves and bandits, accompanied by a young native girl, Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier) on the run from her own tragic life. Everyone here has a tragic past behind them, and most have a tragic future waiting just around the bend in the river.

In the second main story, we are immersed in the violent, bloody conflict known as the Mormon War that took place in 1857-1858 in what is now Utah and Wyoming. In this conflict, Sons of Anarchy alum Kim Coates plays LDS leader Brigham Young, portrayed here as a ruthless, fanatical villain who will stop at nothing to establish a home for his people.

The events are loosely based on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where Mormon militiamen from the Utah Territorial Militia, or Nauvoo Legion, slaughtered at least 120 members of the Baker-Fancher wagon train. In some details, the show follows the story quite closely. The militiamen hire Paiutes and make the attack look like the work of Indians. The actual match that followed lasted for days, but in the show it’s over in minutes. In both, the militia kills witnesses to cover up the slaughter, although many liberties are taken here, including the appearance of a number of fictional characters who survive the assault. In the show, Brigham Young is the chief architect of all hostilities, while his involvement in the historical record remains debated among historians and scholars.

Never mind, we’re not meant to see American Primeval as a historical retelling of events, but rather as a kind of parable about human brutality, how prejudice and misunderstanding and fear and greed can bring out the worst in us, and occasionally the best.

The Shoshone tribe has its share of violent warriors, but overall they are portrayed as brave and honorable people who simply want to be left alone by all the white settlers, Mormon or otherwise. Captain Dellinger of the US Army is an honorable man who only seeks the truth and whose writing is filled with hope for a better future. Isaac Reed, no matter how lost to the world he is, is a brave and compassionate man who risks everything to help perfect strangers. Same with Two Moons. And Whigham steals every scene he’s in as the lovable, world-weary Bridger.

Abish Pratt (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) plays a young Mormon woman who survives the Meadows massacre and is taken in – initially against her will – by Shoshone brave, Red Feather (Derek Hinkey). Both of these characters are people I wish we had explored more in this short six episode series. This is a problem of either too much or too little. We have too few episodes to explore each character enough; either that or we have too much going on and too many characters to follow.

While American Primeval is economical in its runtime, of the two storylines that run throughout, only one feels like it has a satisfying ending. And while they each start in the same place, the two stories end with virtually no connective tissue left. Either would have been a good show or a good movie, but there’s little reason to have both in the same series. Had they somehow circled around at the end and connected the characters and stories from both, I would feel differently. As it stands, after the massacre they become almost completely separated. We switch back and forth between the two, but aside from taking place in the same general area at the same time, there’s nothing left to bridge the gap.

Still, while the whole affair is bleak and violent and depressing in its ugly, brutal depiction of the state of nature, I enjoyed American Primeval quite a lot. I’m a fan of Westerns. I like stripped down, sparse stories that are as much about the feel and atmosphere as they are about the characters. Blood meridian springs to mind. The American frontier is as much a character here as any of the talking parts it resembles The Revenant. And the attention to detail in costumes and sets is extraordinary. I love how dirty everyone is, covered in dirt and grime, living hard in a hard world. I wish more shows would do this.

I’ve complained endlessly about the lack of this in shows like The Walking Dead. It’s so much more realistic and immersive when characters in the wild are wild looking, hair messy, dirty and scarred. I’ve joked that if I ever did a western or zombie show, I’d have all the cast and crew go on a multi-day backpacking trip to prepare, just to feel how dirty you feel after lived in the open, covered in campfire smoke, none of your things ever really clean. I’ve never seen a show do that well American Primeval.

I’m a little less enamored with the cinematography, although it has its moments. Director Peter S. Berg and cinematographer Jacques Jouffret rely a little too heavily on shaky camera and zoomed in motion shots. In moderation, this can add a sense of freneticism to a scene. Too much and it quickly becomes tiresome.

I like the washed out filters that strip the landscape of its color and life. This helps set the tone: Gloomy, desaturated, ghostly; everywhere you step is a temporary graveyard just waiting for graves; the veil between worlds a little too thin in this harsh place. But I could do with a few beautiful establishing shots of snow-capped mountain ranges and wide vistas and fewer dizzyingly shaky bumps. These have their place in the thick of the fight, in desperate moments on the run, but it’s an overused technique and one that can almost make a show feel cheaper than it is. At least there’s no slow motion (looking at you Rebel Moon).

The shoot itself took 135 days, most of which was outdoors in extreme weather conditions in New Mexico, interrupted by the Hollywood strikes. “We shot 99% exteriors. We were on sound stages for only three days,” Berg told Forbes in an interview last year. “Everyone thought it would be so nice to go on a sound stage, but we were all in such wild mental and physical state that we did not want to be inside. It felt good for a moment and then we just wanted to get back outside and into it.” That wild state definitely translates to the screen.

All in all, American Primeval is a bit of a mixed bag, but one I recommend anyway, even if the nature of the show will make it uncomfortable for many. It’s raw and sparse and violent and atmospheric, and Kitsch and Gilpin and the other leads do a good job of bringing their characters to life, but it’s oddly structured, and its split focus never quite pays off in the end. The writing also feels uneven at times, and some of the performances can veer towards melodrama. As a work of cinematic art, however, it is exactly what I had hoped it would be: Ambitious, unusual and distinct.

American Primeval is available to stream now on Netflix.

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