Worth Watching: "The English" (2023)

Last night, my special lady took me to a work-dinner hosted by her company. They took all their employees and +1’s to a dinner in the “Prestige Room” at Gardner Village, followed by… a magic show. Upon learning that there would be a stage magician, my mind immediately went to the same place as all of yours.

Before Arrested Development, the worst part of being a stage magician was just worrying whether or not your Dodge Stanza was big enough to fit your entire wardrobe AND your imaginary girlfriend. Now though, anyone in the audience can shout “ILLUSIONS, MICHAEL!” and instantly ruin your day.

But I gave it the benefit of the doubt, and even suggested to the people at my table, “Maybe it will be the best magic show any of us have ever seen.” Hahahaha. It wasn’t, of course. It was the same magic show any of us have ever seen. The same one I saw in fifth grade when a magician came to Brentwood Elementary and made two metal rings connect and disconnect. The same rope tricks, and card tricks, and tiny nerf balls. Ugh.

And can I be the first to admit that I actually like watching David Blaine’s magic on youtube? Granted he rarely makes a scarf change colors [hold for applause]. His stuff is more like:

The point is, it’s hard to get magic right. And in fantasy, it’s ESPECIALLY difficult.

The English gets magic right..

Is it fun?
To call this show “fun” feels… disrespectful (???). Haha. It would be like telling someone that ketamine therapy was fun; it might technically be true, but you probably missed the point.

The cinematography is beautiful. The soundtrack is perfect. The storyline is a mystery that grabs you right from the first, unraveling unexpectedly along the way. It’s violent, but the violence comes in short, intense bursts. There’s no last battle. No dark lord threatening the western-verse. Who knew you could tell a story that matters with people who don’t? Oh right, every half decent dungeon master in America’s basements.

The genre of this show should technically be “Fantasy Western,” but that’s almost a redundant term. Great westerns always have an air of the supernatural; the ghosts on the plains. Fantasy and Western are bacon and maple donuts, two flavors that taste way better together than they ought to. I was going to say “coffee and weed,” but you get the point. The west, has always been a fantasy.

So yes, this show is fun.

Are the characters gewd?
At the start of last night’s magic dinner, one of the non-magical employees made an announcement and told us the rules of the evening. No photographs during the show, sodas cost extra, and avoid speaking directly to salt-bound summoned spirits. Also, the bathrooms are one building over. The venue itself was fancy enough, but painted with a series of what I can only assume were historically famous magicians, culminating in a mural of Siegfried and Roy and the tiger that ate Roy. “These are our hall of famers, shown here with the animal that eventually destroyed them.” Of course, if you don’t include the tiger, they just look like two random guys in dress blouses, so… [shrug].

The English relies heavily on small, key roles and cameos from trusted character actors. The first episode alone features Ciaran Hinds

Toby Jones

And Cokey Falkow.

Hahaha. Cokey.

They all chew the scenery a little, but this big sky country so there’s plenty of it to go around.

The main characters are played by Emily Blunt and Chaskey Spencer, and truthfully it’s tough to say which of them steals more of the show. It’s probably Fatty Blunt, whose performance WILL make tears come out of your face. Shut up. YOU’RE the one crying! But Chaske’s “Eli Whipp” is like Last Aragorn of the Mohicans. Falling in love with him is inevitable.

But what makes the characters really great is their dialogue. There is no narrator to explain inner turmoil. No Professor Snape pensieve to dump your memories. The English is well written, and the dialogue drives the plot without explaining it. Dr. Strange is not on hand to intermittently force feed you the story arc. No dumb speeches. No wasted screen time. And no dumb speeches.

Does it hate women?
No. Yes. Shit, it might. But in the best way possible.

Hahahaha.

It violates all the rules of women-hating fantasy. The English has rape, sorceress-esque lady villains, and plenty of nameless female NPCs. The female characters get shit on a lot, but with that comes motherly heroism and feminine resolve in face of overwhelming hopelessness. Does it pass the Bechdel Test? Sooooort of. Does, “Discussing something other than a man” include plotting his murder? I’m not sure.

The female characters will tug at your heartstrings. Make ‘em wear gloves though- you don’t want to catch something.

Is there more?
In magic acts, the prestige is the third (and final) act. The payoff. It takes your expectations and raises them, then sends you home wondering how many doves the magician has to kill meet his ROI. Last night’s magic show, performed in the Prestige Room, featured a final act that was entirely shadow puppets. Hahaha. At least 30 minutes of shadow puppets. And before you ask something ridiculous like “Were they good shadow puppets?” try googling the words “good shadow puppets” and see how much your computer respects you after that.

Remember on Sesame Street when they would take a break from cartoons and numbers to do shadow puppets?

Well, it was like that. 30 minutes of that. Some parts of it leaned heavily on the assumption that the audience had a working knowledge of the Transformers movie franchise. My seat was off to the side of the room, so I got a behind-the-screen look at the wizard who was straining intently to make his hands recreate John F Kennedy as a political-cartoon-silhouette. Watching him concentrate was waaaaay more satisfying than actually watching the shadow puppets, and gave me a glimpse into the magician’s relationship with his own hands.

The “more” in The English comes at the end. You realize the crux of the mystery, and that it was right in front of you and not really hidden at all, but that you never bothered to look for it. And that’s fitting for a show about a woman and an Indian in the old west. You’ll marginalize and overlook their stories as much as everyone else did, but only because movies have trained us to see the prestige as a grand reveal, rather than a resolution to good storytelling. When it’s both, its Usual Suspects (or possibly even… The Prestige!). When it’s just the former, it’s Batman yelling “Martha!!!”