Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Chaske Spencer, Emily Blunt, Tom Hughes, Steve Wall, Stephen Rae, Valerie Pachner, Malcolm Storry, Nicholas Aaron, Ciarán Hinds, Ian Pirie, Toby Jones, Miguel Alvarez, William Belleau, Walt Klink, Cristian Solimeno, Tadhg Murphy, Rafe Spall, Julian Bleach, Jan Knightley, Rod Rondeaux, Corey Bird, Sam Alexander, Tonantzin Carmelo, Nichola McAuliffe, Andy Williams, Kristian Phillips, Ben Temple, Gary Farmer, Arturo Vazquez, Matilda Ziobrowski, Jimmy Shaw, Benjamin Victor, Edward Crook, Kimberly Guerrero, Stuart Milligan.
There is a certain cold romance that sits in the minds of the viewer and that of the expansion of the settler on Native American soil. Arguably it comes from a place of being told what happened, rather than being shown, of finding out for oneself the truth, the hypocrisy, the death, the fear of what happened over three thousand miles away from Europe’s shores. The fresh hope, the promise of new land far away from Europe’s wars was an enticement, and that leads to privilege, and then to destruction.
There are many ways in which to look upon one of the scars on United States of America history, and none of them shine a positive light on the period which resulted in a genocide that few are willing to concede happened, and even less are prepared to talk about less the tears of the ancestors rain down on lands that can no longer hold their grief
Hugo Blick’s revisionist six-part Western series, The English, is perhaps one of the most endearing, clear-cut tales to come to look upon certain aspects and events of the second half of the 19th Century, and whilst some moments are played out as inventive, of amalgamation to heighten the tension felt as Emil Blunt’s focused and vengeful Cornelia Locke makes her way in the company of Pawnee Nation scout Eli Whipp to the point of her madness and confrontation with the past and destiny, there is the back drop of expansion, of massacre, of damnation of the great spirits, and all that was revealed under those once great skies.
The English is not about blame as such, certainly not for government, but for the individuals who allow atrocities to stand, to the witnesses who observe but never shoulder the gun in response, for there is enough blame in the name of empire, both national and personal, to see the country dripped in blood until the end of time. What is does allude to is the sense of disgust and disease, the corruption of mind, body, and soul as new avenues of capitalism and greed are opened up as the various tribes of Native Americans fight and lose territory to the settlers, to the businesses.
Hugo Blick’s tale of a woman wronged, of a nation on the edge of its own severe mistakes, is absolute class, Emily Blunt’s portrayal of Cornelia Locke is magnificent, as too is Chaske Spencer’s Eli Whipp, but it is also to the likes of the excellent Rafe Spall in arguably his finest screen performance as the vile rapist and syphilitic David Melmont, to Stephen Rae’s kindly Sherriff Robert Marshall, and the fleeting, but riveting performance of Toby Jones as Sebold Cusk, that gives this exceptional series its drive and impetus.
In the tradition of storytelling, The English is a phenomenon, one that frames not how the West was won, but how it was savagely eradicated by process. Laid bare, beautifully filmed, a memory to those that were lost in the forging of a new nation, and the secrets they buried just under the surface.
Ian D. Hall