cafenowhere

Every day that I hop on the elliptical, I’ve been watching “The Changeling,” an Apple+ show based on the novel by Victor LaValle. I haven’t read the book, but I read another LaValle novel, The Devil in Silver, which I absolutely loved. So I was hopeful that this show would at least distract me from my huffing and puffing. (I'll put something slightly spoiler-ish behind a cut.)

Now, watching the show in 15 to 26 minute bursts is not the recommended method, but I’ve been surprised by how invested I’ve been despite the interruptions. Currently I’m on episode 7 of 8. The show is dark, figuratively and literally—sometimes I’m looking at what appears to be a blank screen—and ponderous, in pace and theme. But every time I turn it on, I’m immediately recaptured by this grim fairy tale about postpartum psychosis.

Part of that is the guiding light of the narration, performed by the author simply but sympathetically. I enjoy listening to him. There’s a lot of repetition in the voiceovers, partly because of the back-and-forth timeline, that might annoy me if I were binge-watching (too many shows spoonfeed the audience) but here the repetition works like it does in a fairy tale. It gives events extra weight, and it permits the storyteller to draw the reader on despite an increasingly frightful tale.  

The performances are jaw-dropping. The main character, Apollo, is played by LaKeith Stanfield, who conjures such enormous humanity. He embodies a profound love for life, books, his wife, and baby. Love is strength in this world. The other lead, Emma, is played by Clark Backo, who can convey both a soul-deep calm and a mind pushed past its limit. The eminently graceful Adina Porter does a great job as Apollo’s mother, and Jane Kaczmarek as Cal is surprisingly likable.

 

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I’m a little burned out on tv shows. Studios seem intent on stretching what could be movie-length stories out to multi-season series. And then they, often as not, decide the show isn’t profitable enough and axe it mid-plot. I’m looking at you, Shadow and Bone. But in a lackluster movie season, I make do with what I’m given. Which is why I’ve also started Amazon Prime’s “Dead Ringers,” a mini-series based on the movie by David Cronenberg, which in turn is based on the novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland. But that’s for another post.