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The Sopranos prequel - The Many Saints Of Newark

Started by Custard, June 29, 2021, 05:52:04 PM

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colacentral

Quote from: chveik on October 07, 2021, 01:37:14 AM
he has reached the end of the line narratively, whether he dies at that moment or later doesn't really matter. you can look for clues if you like but a problem arises when people make all sopranos talk around it. the greatest thing about that ending is that they chose not explicity show how tony gets his comeuppance like they do in every other gangster fiction (whether it's a trial or an execution). but seemingly people have always the desire to get a really neat and closed ending. i don't see the point of having this relationship with art

This thing about "looking for clues" is something I see come up in Twin Peaks chat too, and I don't understand it. You mean observing the text? It's this idea that the writers don't want the audience to pay attention. Lynch and Chase may not want to explicitly spoon feed the answers, but that's not the same as expecting the audience to ignore what's actually in the text. Lynch in particular talks about mysteries a lot, and a fundamental feature of mysteries is a set of clues and an answer. The fun is in trying to solve it, and it would spoil the fun for him to tell us the answer. That doesn't mean there isn't one. It's not the totality of the text; it's the themes and subtext where the true ambiguity is, but for some reason there are people who have this preciousness about plot discussions. It enhances our enjoyment of the "true ambiguities" to grapple with the ambiguities of the plot. It seems disrespectful of the writers to dismiss all the attention to detail and set up as just imagined clues.

13 schoolyards

It's not so much "imagined clues" as it is that the final episode literally does not show us the death of Tony Soprano. It shows us a number of events that could be leading up to his death, it most definitely would be in tune with the rest of the season and the series for the episode to end with his brains splattered all over his family's faces - but we don't see that.

For some viewers, it's a bunch of clues leading them directly to the conclusion that in the next ten seconds he's dead; for others it's to give the audience a sense of what it's like to live as Tony Soprano, constantly on edge, where any moment could be your last.

The "he's dead" camp often seems to be focused on plot reasons for why he's dead (not that there's not also a lot of imagery that also backs that theory up); the "'he's alive" camp focuses more on what it'd actually be like to live the life of Tony Soprano. Personally, I think it's more powerful an ending if he doesn't die, because the last thing the series does is show us the hell he's living in. Even after six seasons I'm more interested in who Tony Soprano is than I am in which mob faction wants him dead for what reason.


Custard

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on October 07, 2021, 10:48:43 AM

For some viewers, it's a bunch of clues leading them directly to the conclusion that in the next ten seconds he's dead; for others it's to give the audience a sense of what it's like to live as Tony Soprano, constantly on edge, where any moment could be your last.

There's something to be said for that, and no doubt he'd have to watch his back at every turn. But Chase himself has ruled this out, and says that is absolutely not what he was trying to convey. He even says in that moment, having defeated Phil, he was being too lax in terms of security, almost arrogant about it.

He's sat in the centre of a restaurant, where anyone could come at him from any side. He's there alone. He's fiddling with the jukebox. He's just going about his day. He isn't worried or in fear in that scene. He thinks it's over, he's won, he's won again

And of course, that's when they can get you

colacentral

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on October 07, 2021, 10:48:43 AM
It's not so much "imagined clues" as it is that the final episode literally does not show us the death of Tony Soprano. It shows us a number of events that could be leading up to his death, it most definitely would be in tune with the rest of the season and the series for the episode to end with his brains splattered all over his family's faces - but we don't see that.

For some viewers, it's a bunch of clues leading them directly to the conclusion that in the next ten seconds he's dead; for others it's to give the audience a sense of what it's like to live as Tony Soprano, constantly on edge, where any moment could be your last.

The "he's dead" camp often seems to be focused on plot reasons for why he's dead (not that there's not also a lot of imagery that also backs that theory up); the "'he's alive" camp focuses more on what it'd actually be like to live the life of Tony Soprano. Personally, I think it's more powerful an ending if he doesn't die, because the last thing the series does is show us the hell he's living in. Even after six seasons I'm more interested in who Tony Soprano is than I am in which mob faction wants him dead for what reason.



The thing about your second camp you allude to, "Tony living on edge" etc - I've never thought that that is what comes across in Gandolfini's performance of that scene. He looks around the diner but he's not paranoid; if anything he seems so miserable that he's almost accepted his fate.

Everything about that scene is death rather than misery or paranoia.

Custard

A nice touch as well is the painting of the American football player behind where Tony is sitting. Reminding the viewer what he possibly could have been, if he'd gone another direction

Though Junior might refute that...

13 schoolyards

It's been a couple years since I last rewatched the final scene, but my takeaway at the time was of Tony slowly sinking back into being on edge - initially it felt like things were sorted, he was on top, and then over the course of one scene the status quo came creeping back in on him. I didn't come away thinking he was dead, I came away thinking there was no escape for him. Whatever his personal or professional successes, he couldn't escape who he was and that was a very stressful way to be.

So he probably had a blackout and then got shot

QDRPHNC

Thing is, I broadly agree that ambiguity is good and engagement with art does not need closure or neat endings. I just don't think it applies here. And in this particular case, I think that affecting this pose of being above "needing" an ending actually does a disservice to it. It's not just based on the plot. The show is loaded with symbolism, visual motifs repeated over and over, words said casually which resurface later... to suddenly stop taking these things into account at the last moment - arguably the most important moment of the show - is baffling to me.

There's also the elephant in the room, which is that
Spoiler alert
David Chase confirmed that he died
[close]
.

Custard

That's another reason I'm not really a fan of the idea they had of bringing Carmella back for the start of the film. The reason it cuts to black, for me, is cos Tony no longer exists in that world. He's gone, therefore the universe the show exists in, that we have been privy to,  is gone too, as he was the show. It's his story. To show any characters after that scene would dilute that for me, I think. It does, and should all end in that moment

Though of course there's an argument that the film exists outside of the show and is its own thing. But I hope people understand what I'm trying to say

colacentral

Another aspect that never gets talked about with that episode is the Americana, with the "Made in America" title and the Ford wheel and everything else. I bring this up in every Sopranos thread but I never see it mentioned elsewhere, so I like to bang on about it. The way that the start of season 6 has Tony dabbling with Eastern spirituality and eating the "clean" sushi, eventually gorging on sushi, and finally gorging on onion rings. The junky food, the junky American SUV, the gratuitous violence and greed, ending in the quintessentially American diner with a horrible junky American song.

I've heard Chase say that he chose the Journey song because the people he played it for said "God no, not that," and he liked that it got a reaction. My feeling is that's because of that theme of trashy American culture, giving people a visceral reaction to a horrible chart song that is nonetheless part of Tony's junky American DNA.

Chase says he likes the song but I do too, while still recognising that it's awful.

QDRPHNC

I've always loved the title, Made in America. It's perfect. The only things made in America these days are people like Tony. And it ties back wonderfully to the very first episode (which of course became one of the strongest threads running through the whole thing) of Tony lamenting that he missed out on the good times.

Custard

And then in this new film we see that "the good times" where anything but

QDRPHNC

Tony's romanticizing of the past is one of my favourite character traits of his, because we're all guilty of it. One bit that always makes me smile is when AJ (unintentionally, just by being a grumpy teen) punctures Tony's speech about the old Italian church, when he asks why they never go, despite the same speech totally working on Meadow (and us) a few seasons before.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Shameless Custard on October 07, 2021, 09:50:19 AM
It's funny how you found yourself rooting for him time and time again though. Despite the despicable acts you see him carry out constantly, over 6 years

I honestly didn't, though. By Season 6, especially the episode where he pisses off Hesh, I was thoroughly sick of the cunt. Gandolfini did an amazing job at portraying him though, since I was still interested in seeing where his story went. He wasn't an uninteresting bastardman to watch.

Probably the only act of his where I didn't think "Tony you sack of shit" in S6 was
Spoiler alert
him killing Chris -- I didn't cheer it on, but was also left incredibly fucked and conflicted by it. Chris was always dangerous both to himself and others, but fuuuuhck. Killing him wasn't the solution, and how he died was awful.
[close]

badaids


My thought on the ending hasn't changed over the years. Tony doesn't die, all the tension and build up and paranoia with the parking, members only and the mundanity of life going on etc... is just us putting us in his shoes, this is his life forever. It's fun to read and discuss all the theories about what that final scene means but I've always found this theory the most plausible. But I think a lot of this come from the fact that in spite of being well bum cloth, I'm still rooting for the character of Tony. It's a great ending though.

colacentral

Quote from: colacentral on October 07, 2021, 10:01:05 AM
Why is it not depicted from outside of him and why is it ambiguous? Because "the point" is about you the audience feeling what it's like to be alive one minute and dead the next, and question if you've done anything valuable with your life up to that point. You are meant to feel the suddenness of being alive one minute and dead the next, rather than see it and experience it as the audience. Life can suddenly end one day as abruptly as that.

As much as I think Alan Sepinwall is a dickhead, his initial review of the finale was the one that said "the audience was whacked." As cringey as that is, I do think that's 50% right. The final scene shifts the role of the audience from observer to participant.

The Phil Leotardo death scene is there to make you see Tony's death without seeing it, down to him having two grand kids in the car who stand in for Meadow and AJ. It's incredibly sad and powerful to think of Meadow running in to the diner to see her father and seeing something as horrific as that happen to characters we feel like we know so well, and it exists as an even more disturbing image in our minds than if we had seen it. I don't know why anyone would want to deprive themselves of that as an ending.

Just another quick rambling point about this, because it's got me thinking about it again today.

Another point about the shift of the audience from observer to participant is that this is set up earlier in both the Phil death scene and the Silvio shooting scene, with crowds of people gawping at and enjoying the violence. We get a kick out of watching Phil die because he's been other'd as the enemy of our hero, but you wouldn't wish it on someone you actually know and love. Bringing the audience into the perspective of someone at their point of death at the moment that you expect something big to happen is a glass of water in the face saying, "This is the reality of violence, it's not entertainment." Tony doesn't get the glorious Scarface ending and neither do we. The violence is no longer some romantic and distant thing, you're in it, and it feels horrible, and then life just ends. I think a big part of that is undermined if you go down the road of saying, "Yeah, but he might also have got arrested."

You could probably make this about the Iraq war in some way too, obviously there's shades of that in there.

Interestingly, speaking of David Milch earlier, there's a good interview with him from around the same time where he talks about the Iraq war being just another miniseries that the public got bored of. I think it's this one: https://youtu.be/MDTVIP8bvE8

And the idea of the glorious TV / film death scene being deromanticised is sort of seen again later in Breaking Bad, when
Spoiler alert
Hank is killed mid-Dirty Harry style speech.
[close]

Quote from: H-O-W-L on October 07, 2021, 01:30:15 PM
I honestly didn't, though. By Season 6, especially the episode where he pisses off Hesh, I was thoroughly sick of the cunt. Gandolfini did an amazing job at portraying him though, since I was still interested in seeing where his story went. He wasn't an uninteresting bastardman to watch.

Probably the only act of his where I didn't think "Tony you sack of shit" in S6 was
Spoiler alert
him killing Chris -- I didn't cheer it on, but was also left incredibly fucked and conflicted by it. Chris was always dangerous both to himself and others, but fuuuuhck. Killing him wasn't the solution, and how he died was awful.
[close]

Sort of tangential to your point about Chris - I may just be projecting this, but I feel like the true power of the show is the way that Chase is able to confront uncomfortable or potentially controversial feelings we "normal" non-Mafia people have in our own lives through the shitty vessel of Tony. I've always kind of thought that there's something very personal about that episode - Not that Chase has murdered someone, but that it grapples with the idea of performative grief, and Tony just being like, "Nope, sorry, I'm glad he's dead." The earlier episode with Livia's funeral is basically about the same thing.

QDRPHNC

This morning I'm catching up on the Sopranos Autopsy essays for the episodes I watched last week. For the first time, just realized the connection between the title of the first episode we see Tony in the afterlife - Join the Club - and the Member's Only jacket which Eugene wore in the previous episode where he joined the same club.

badaids


The Phil Leotardo death scene is hilarious. The terry towelling tracksuit he's wearing, and the funny looking bloke clumping around who gives the delayed OH SHIT!

Custard

Bit off topic, but one of the things that I always remember about Chris, is his last scene at the Bing where he's proud of being a new dad of a baby daughter, and someone (Paulie?) jokes that she'll be dancing the poles in a few years.

The camera then slowly pans round the room to show everyone laughing, including Tony. It's the biggest boot in the guts for a man who's trying to celebrate some good in his life, at last. And shows in one shot that these people aren't his family, or friends. They couldn't give two fucks about him. It's heartbreaking

It's like the time Chris goes to stay at Uncle Pat's farm with Tony and Tony B. He has the piss ripped out of him mercilessly, then decides to leave the trip early. In the car ride home he begins crying. It's so sad

Still, Chris should've chosen Adriana over Tony. He was damned from that moment. That was his chance to redeem himself, at least in part. Adriana genuinely loved him, maybe the only person who ever did

colacentral

Quote from: Shameless Custard on October 07, 2021, 02:17:22 PM
Bit off topic, but one of the things that I always remember about Chris, is his last scene at the Bing where he's proud of being a new dad, and someone (Paulie?) jokes that she'll be dancing the poles in a few years.

The camera then slowly pans round the room to show everyone laughing, including Tony. It's lthe biggest boot in the guts for a man who's trying to celebrate some good in his life, at last. And shows in one shot that these people aren't his family, or friends. They couldn't give two fucks about him. It's heartbreaking

It's like the time Chris goes to stay at Uncle Pat's farm with Tony and Tony B. He has the piss ripped out of him mercilessly, then decides to leave the trip early. In the car ride home he begins crying. It's so sad

Still, Chris should've chosen Adriana over Tony. He was damned from that moment. That was his chance t redeem himel, at least in part

Importantly with that scene, it's that he's treated with kindness and respect one to one, but as soon as it becomes a three, the two gang up on him. Again, I have to assume that it's something pulled directly out of Chase's own life, because it's so specific and relatable. I'm sure most people have been there, where people suddenly morph into someone else as a group dynamic changes.

QDRPHNC

Quote from: Shameless Custard on October 07, 2021, 02:17:22 PM
Still, Chris should've chosen Adriana over Tony. He was damned from that moment. That was his chance t redeem himel, at least in part

To me, this is one of the biggest themes - almost everyone is given the opportunity to get out, and they're all too weak to take it (underlining the irony of Tony's veneration of Gary Cooper, "the strong silent type" - Tony is neither).

Controversial take: AJ's arc is the true tragedy. If you get past how annoying he is, he is actually developing a social conscience, actually comes up with a plan to join the military and be a translator, but Tony and Carmella are too weak to bear the pain of him doing something like that, so they dangle a shallow, high-paying job with Little Carmine in front of him, bringing about precisely the thing that Tony maintained from the beginning he didn't want for his son.

And on top of that, (I think) he gets to see his dad have his brains blown out right in front of him, and we know from Ro that once your husband no longer around, nobody gives a shit about you and your kids any more. The future is bleak, but it's the future Tony condemned them to.

Custard

Yep, definitely. Great writing

Though I guess Chris sealed his fate with Cleaver. Don't know why he held such a grudge against Tony for the Adriana situation anyway, as it was Chris himself who doomed her. What did he expect was gonna happen once he grassed her up to Tony? He could've helped her, but didn't, and chose Tony

Custard

Quote from: QDRPHNC on October 07, 2021, 02:23:19 PM
To me, this is one of the biggest themes - almost everyone is given the opportunity to get out, and they're all too weak to take it (underlining the irony of Tony's veneration of Gary Cooper, "the strong silent type" - Tony is neither).

Controversial take: AJ's arc is the true tragedy. If you get past how annoying he is, he is actually developing a social conscience, actually comes up with a plan to join the military and be a translator, but Tony and Carmella are too weak to bear the pain of him doing something like that, so they dangle a shallow, high-paying job with Little Carmine in front of him, bringing about precisely the thing that Tony maintained from the beginning he didn't want for his son.

That's another thing, Carmella is shown throughout the series to have all these grand plans for her kids. Yet by the end one ends up a low level person on a film set, the other a lawyer for criminals and seems to be set to marry into another family of mobsters.

The look on Carmella's face when Meadow says she won't pursue being a doctor after all. She then tries to pretend she's happy about it in front of Charmaine and Artie, but no one is falling for it. That, in a way, is Carmella's chickens coming home to roost

QDRPHNC

Quote from: Shameless Custard on October 07, 2021, 02:32:18 PM
That's another thing, Carmella is shown throughout the series to have all these grand plans for her kids. Yet by the end one ends up a low level person on a film set, the other a lawyer for criminals and seems to be set to marry into another family of mobsters.

That's what so brilliant about the ending (IN MY OPINION). With Tony dead, the ramifications unfold in your head. How long will Little Carmine keep employing AJ if he doesn't owe Tony a favour? Who is going to work with Meadow when her dad's murder is all over the news? What's Carmella going to live on when everyone stops giving her the money they totally promised Tony they would?

colacentral

Quote from: Shameless Custard on October 07, 2021, 02:26:18 PM
Yep, definitely. Great writing

Though I guess Chris sealed his fate with Cleaver. Don't know why he held such a grudge against Tony for the Adriana situation anyway, as it was Chris himself who doomed her. What did he expect was gonna happen once he grassed her up to Tony? He could've helped her, but didn't, and chose Tony

It occurred to me recently watching Fellini's 8 1/2 that that's probably where Chase got the idea for Cleaver from, at least the scene of everyone at the screening. It's the same idea of there being tension with the people watching what's on screen and knowing how it relates to reality.

Quote from: QDRPHNC on October 07, 2021, 02:35:02 PM
What's Carmella going to live on when everyone stops giving her the money they totally promised Tony they would?

Yeah, again, that's something that's deliberately seeded when you get the shot of Vito and Paulie (I think?) getting into the hospital lift after talking to Carmela. They have no loyalty to anyone but themselves and once Tony is dead, she won't be getting anything.

Custard

He kept telling her he'd put money away for her, but his lawyer was a piece of shit too, so I imagine he may have creamed some off the top, if only he and Tony knew how much and where

All this is what makes the show so fantastic. All the different facets and layers. Tony did all that evil and immoral shit, and what did it really get him, in the end? Death, misery, and a family left with hardly anything

That final season has to be the darkest, bleakest season of anything, ever. So good

chveik

Quote from: colacentral on October 07, 2021, 10:40:01 AM
This thing about "looking for clues" is something I see come up in Twin Peaks chat too, and I don't understand it. You mean observing the text? It's this idea that the writers don't want the audience to pay attention. Lynch and Chase may not want to explicitly spoon feed the answers, but that's not the same as expecting the audience to ignore what's actually in the text. Lynch in particular talks about mysteries a lot, and a fundamental feature of mysteries is a set of clues and an answer. The fun is in trying to solve it, and it would spoil the fun for him to tell us the answer. That doesn't mean there isn't one. It's not the totality of the text; it's the themes and subtext where the true ambiguity is, but for some reason there are people who have this preciousness about plot discussions. It enhances our enjoyment of the "true ambiguities" to grapple with the ambiguities of the plot. It seems disrespectful of the writers to dismiss all the attention to detail and set up as just imagined clues.

why are you calling it a text?

13 schoolyards

It's interesting that it seems like the only way The Sopranos could continue after the final scene is if Tony dies. If you don't think he's dead, that's it - there's no point speculating on what comes next, because all that comes next is more of the same. But if he's dead, all these other plot avenues open up.

In a way, reading the ending as one in which he dies is the way you get to keep the series going.


QDRPHNC

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on October 07, 2021, 03:00:10 PM
It's interesting that it seems like the only way The Sopranos could continue after the final scene is if Tony dies. If you don't think he's dead, that's it - there's no point speculating on what comes next, because all that comes next is more of the same for him. But if he's dead, all these other plot avenues open up.

In a way, reading the ending as one in which he dies is the way you get to keep the series alive.

One way of looking at it I guess. I'm enjoying these discussions and all, but for me the ending is brilliant for one main reason, and that is that not seeing the murder is so much more effective than seeing the murder. It couldn't have been more perfect.

13 schoolyards

Quote from: QDRPHNC on October 07, 2021, 03:01:40 PM
One way of looking at it I guess. I'm enjoying these discussions and all, but for me the ending is brilliant for one main reason, and that is that not seeing the murder is so much more effective than seeing the murder. It couldn't have been more perfect.

Yeah, I think the one thing everyone can agree on is that it's a perfect ending. Probably the best out of the big US dramas of the period.