THE ENGLISH 11/18/22

I recommend seeing The English, a strangely surreal six-part Western series on Amazon and BBC, beautifully acted by Emily Blunt - the title’s English woman - who has come to this dry, expanse of land that is the American frontier in the 1890s where the rule of law is discarded, tossed into the air to fly among the vultures. There are many flashbacks whereby time and space are dislodged which can be disconcerting and often vertiginous. But these vignettes eventually coalesce - with deep poignancy and desolation.

Emily Blunt’s character,  Lady Cornelia Locke’s rarefied life in England is suddenly and violently assaulted propelling her to journey to the “new world” on a mission of revenge. There are many cameo roles with wonderful actors popping up throughout the series but Blunt commands our gaze and our heart. She appears to be a beautiful innocent toting a bagful of cash, but we discover early on that she has the ability and confidence to unleash carnage on her enemies.

Chaske Spencer, a Native American actor plays the other lead, Sgt. Eli Whipp, a Pawnee scout who recently left the US Army in Oklahoma and is traveling to Nebraska in order to legally “stake a land claim” in his ancestral home.  A harrowing incident brings Cornelia and Chaske together and they begin to travel alongside one another developing a relationship that delicately balances that tensile line between the cliched stoic silent hero and the damsel in distress. Their connection eventually becomes one of understanding and wonder in their very affinity. 

In the many subplots which expose the underlying cruelty, greed, and racism imposed by the myriad “old world” settler’s acquisition of the wild beauty and bleak dirt of the terrain, we glimpse the roots of America’s infirmity. Wresting power from the native tribes, retribution, hatred of the “other”, and a belief in extreme individualism were as rampant then as it is today. 

 Throughout the series, I was captivated by the startlingly original clipped dialogue which translated into the mystery of poetry. Words are often terse and stilted launching visual images. The silence of the sprawling landscape echoes the silence of communication. This is a love story with the knowledge that it is ill-fated and forever immutable.