by Nathaniel R
I received an email from a reader yesterday earlier this week suggesting that we discuss "Squid Game" which has become very popular, quite rapidly, all over the world. We've had lots of internal discussion here at The Film Experience about how much television to cover since TV and Film have been merging into a two-headed amorphous beast for at least a decade now. The movies the general public likes best now are inarguably, the "continuing series" movies which makes them much more like television than their blockbuster ancestors. Today I screened Dune and it is literally just half a movie! Meanwhile the TV series that win the most acclaim, if not always the biggest audiences, are inarguably the ones that feel the most "cinematic", a simmering change that reached a boil with Mad Men (if you ask us) since it looked and sounded as delicious and expensive as the very best the cinema itself had to offer. For the past ten years movies are getting longer (the new James Bond is almost three hours. WTF) and television seasons keep getting shorter! I suspect younger audiences don't fully get how much different the landscapes are now than they were even 15 years ago... but I digress. This is all a long way of saying we never know which series to cover and we obviously need a bigger team!
Speaking of longwindedness. If every showrunner on earth is now allowed to just make people wait for something to happen until episode two or even three (that would have got you immediately cancelled pre-2010s when shows would shove every possible hook they could into a pilot episode) I can begin this discussion of Squid Game with a detour to Midnight Mass...
Your mileage may vary but people have a LOT of patience for slow-boil storytelling these days. I don't share that patience and I'm often convinced that many miniseries would be better as two hour movies. Just cut the filler subplots and definitely cut the repetitive scenes that told me something I already learned in the first few episodes. My current prime example of this is Midnight Mass which is unconscionably slow. I was so angry at the end of the first episode that I planned to never watch another... one full hour just for atmosphere with no actual plot?!? You have to be kidding me! But my best friend kept telling me "give it another chance. You'll really like it. You guessed correctly that it's a vampire series and I promise it gets interesting." He was right (sort of) and after watching three more hours of it I am interested.
But here's the thing. All of that interest could have happened in a single hour. The first four episodes only have about 45 minutes (tops) of plot and atmosphere is a pretty easy thing to convey in mere seconds with the right production team and actors. The plotting and ideas in the show are interesting and three of the actors hold attention very well on their own (Hamish Linklater, Zach Gilford, and Rahul Kohli) but the riches are obscured and diminished by creator/writer Mike Flanagan's utter inability to edit himself. If this story had any sense of pacing and urgency I would recommend it to people but I can't because I'm so fucking annoyed... even at the parts I enjoy! The streaming era appears to have convinced a lot of artists that they have all the time in the world to tell their stories. But stories need urgency...especially those in the thriller / horror / action genres.
Where is the urgency?
Oh, it's right over here in the popular South Korean series, Squid Game!
The feelings of excitement and urgency and possibility arrive just 19 minutes into the "pilot" episode if you will though we should note that pilots dont really exist in the world of streaming which just produces full seasons without that very wasteful/costly and weirdly still existant practice of traditional TV.
The first half of the episode is the set up, establishing tone (at least partially) and ably conveying the show's weird mix of misery porn / desperation comedy as we follow the broke and foolish Gi-hun (Greg Chun) through what we can only assume is a typical day. He dodges loan sharks. He disappoints everyone. He gambles away what little money he has. He's constantly nervous and depressed. Then one day at the train station he is approached by "The Salesman" (Train to Busan's charismatic leading man Gong Yoo), and offered what he assumes will be easy money to play a simple game. Of course he loses over and over again. Some people turn red from embarrassment. Gi-hun is shameless so his face get there by being slapped over and over again as he loses dozens of times.
Halfway through the episode is the pivot point as Gi-hun calls The Salesman back and agrees to play a series of "games" for an undisclosed huge stack of money. He is promptly drugged and wakes up in dystopian barracks in a secret compound with hundreds of other people who are just as desperate as he is.
Squid Game's first episode, "Red Light, Green Light" isnt a slowburn so much as a rapid boiling over. The second half of the episode is a dangerous and weird rush as all hell breaks loose during the first game (the children's game of the episode's title). Gi-hun and his fellow players realize with horror that losing or being "eliminated" from these games is a euphemism for being assassinated and the playing field is suddenly as bloody as a slaughter house. It's all so tense and freaky that the series can abrupty change pacing style in the much sadder and slower episode 2 and still feel nearly as riveting. It's surely worth noting that episode two is called "Hell" even though it takes place in the real world as opposed to the violent made-up game world of that secret compound. With Parasite in 2019 South Korea laid claim to being the preeminent showbiz voice on the horrors of the 21st century's increasing wealth disparity and they aren't letting up. I'm just two episodes in so it's not exactly clear what's going on -- I assume the games are a dark niche hobby for the sadistic ultra wealthy and they're amusing themselves with the slaughter of the masses Hunger Games style... but that's a guess -- it's very clear that the show's primary theme is most definitely the socioeconomic hell of unfettered late-stage capitalism. The production design is particularly inspired in this regard -- Two days later I can't stop thinking about that freakishly cute floating transparent piggy bank of money hovering over the desperate players. The themes are coming through loud and clear even though Native Korean speakers are complaining that Netflix's subtitles are quite poor and missing the socio-economic nuances of the characters and by extension the metaphors of the show.
I have more feelings about both shows but should probably see more episodes or finish altogether before sharing them. If you're watching what did you think of the first two episodes? Please no spoilers beyond those episodes in the comments!
P.S. As the AV Club notes Squid Game is theoretically eligible for the Emmys next year even though foreign series are generally not eligible. The difference here is that Netflix had a major hand in its funding and production rather than buying the rights to stream it so theoretically that means enough American involvement. The issue is that Netflix might choose to submit it instead to the International Emmys where it has a better chance at winning. They'll have to do the math on that just as documentaries and telefilms have to make those calculations between going for Emmys or Oscars in this increasingly confusing marketplace where the separate artforms of television and film are now under the same big tent of "content".