Language: English
In a scene from Amazon Prime’s Night Sky, Franklin, played by J K Simmons is trying to carry his wife Irene to bed. The elevator he has had installed inside his home stops mid-way. He labours to carry in her arms, his body evidently shaking under the strain. But in his voice, Franklin crackles up a like a child, assuaging whatever guilt Irene feels for putting him through it. Night Sky is a confused and often messy sci-fi thriller that does not know what it wants to be exactly. Over the course of its 8 episodes it flitters between three different stories, chaotically trying to bind them together to create both suspense and a sense of grand revelation. Night Sky has a premise that in the hands of stunning actors like Simmons and Sissy Spacek, momentarily feels like a moving allegory about ageing and escaping at the same time. Instead, the series gargles traditional sci-fi tropes and unloads unnecessary twists that ultimately prove to be its own undoing.
Franklin and Irene are an ageing couple living alone, and on the cusp of their 50th anniversary together. Irene played by Sissy Spacek has just had a fall that has reduced her mobility. Franklin is beginning to forget things. While they nurse both the challenges of everyday life and the trauma of the death of their son, both Irene and Franklin are holding onto a little secret. In the basement of their warehouse, lies a portal that takes them to, what looks like starry, desolate and stunningly beautiful planet in space. It’s a chamber, the couple often visits without having ventured beyond the door that might take them across. Simultaneously, a story about a mother and daughter guarding a similar portal in Argentina crashes the party. Just as Irene builds the courage to venture beyond the portal she finds a mysterious man – Jade who has apparently arrived from the other side. Thus begins a game of intergalactic mystery, space spanning folklore and a plodding narrative that is a whole lot of bearings, glued to several ideas all at once.
There are a couple of shows within this series. The intergalactic mystery that constitutes historic extra-terrestrial cults, a generational cold war and the mystery of the dead planet and the portals that lead people to it. But the show that really kicks in the teeth, and is perhaps the one that creators should have hung onto is the slow, painful decline of an ageing couple trying to deal with the burdens of grief and the pressures of living beyond the point of reconciliation. Sissy Spacek is extraordinary as a quietly tormented Irene whose curiosity drives her to find new ways to deal with her trauma. She has a sort of broken gaze, that confused look of fondness for the many mysteries of life. Of the couple, she is the driving force as a broken but workable cassette player that wants to play its one last song.
J K Simmons on the other hand is a delightfully self-effacing man living what is left of his life with the grace of someone just relieved to have a purpose. He gets things done, but also, reluctantly agrees to Irene’s demands for a little adventure. The chemistry between the old couple is nothing short of treacherous and beautiful at the same time. There is a certain poignancy to their situation, though clichéd in some sense, both Spacek and Simmons embody trauma in a way, it overpowers every other element of intrigue fitted into the capsule of a show that may have been better off just being about them. The portal to an alien planet sounds like an allegory for closure, an unknown place that you want to figure out because until you do, you live on with the psychological consequences of not knowing. Real-world pressures like having to sell the place etc, add to the urgency of Irene’s existentialism. But it’s when the two sit, handle mundane tasks and talk life in general, when the show becomes a Kauffmanesque story of ageing, as mystery of many unknowns. Does the portal simply mean life beyond death? These and other questions come to you, but unfortunately, the series has its own comic book ideas about travel, conflict, mystery and intrigue.
If you can keep your eye on Simmons and Spacek alone then Night Sky can still be rewarding. Everything else in the series is uninteresting, and given the uneven performances of the supporting cast, not to mention the pointless expansion of the show’s geography, feels like a needless burden. The mystery behind the portals, their history rooted in intergalactic battles and theology of some sort is underwhelming to the point that when they begin to reveal themselves you can’t help but feel, the series could have used the template of action rather than the ruminative, ponderous anchor of two actors carrying two memorable performances. It’s because of them that this show has any value, and maybe for them that this series should have existed. Less is more, at times!
Night Sky is streaming on Amazon Prime Video
The author writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Views expressed are personal.
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