Shoot dad’s westerns with a burst of Winchester! With At the dawn of Americathe Netflix mini-series broadcast on January 9, the conquest of the West in 19th century America draws from the first session a horizon that no one had dared to imagine. Devilishly twilight, hypnotizing as rarely, hyperviolent, this dizzying epic unearths the hashtag de guerre: #bingewatching! 20 Minutes swallowed its six episodes in one go.
Aboard a Mormon convoy
It starts almost like in Little House on the Prairie. The carriage of Sara Rowell, a mother who arrives from Boston with her son Devin, enters Fort Bridger. In this remote corner of Wyoming, the young woman is looking for a guide to accompany them to Crooks Springs, a distant town where, she claims, her husband is waiting for her.
She’s the stubborn type Sara. Despite the refusals (“too far”, “too dangerous”, “too many grizzly bears”…) opposed to her by the most hardened locals, the mother manages to join a convoy of Mormons also setting out to conquer the Great West. . And soon there will be drama…
A pioneer with a troubled past
Desert and snowy plains populated by a few tribes of not always friendly Native Americans; valiant settlers who have already taken possession of certain lands; a Mormon militia that does not wear gloves (but rather balaclavas!) to expand its territory by force; the Army with its notorious impotence; Sara the pioneer with a troubled past; her crippled kid; and Isaac, the lonely man of the woods…: that’s the setting! Dirt, mud, blood too. Lots of blood.
A series where we shoot and scalp
Because if a river flows in the middle, the vast expanses that some covet here and defend are the scene of extremely bloody clashes. Sara had been warned upon her arrival: “I assure you, Mrs. Rowell, that none of this will be easy.” The spectator also knew what to expect…
In At the dawn of Americawe hang, we drown, we stone, we butcher, we eviscerate, we immolate, we shoot and we scalp. The images in the series spare us nothing. In terms of violence, this dark western dances more with madmen than with wolves! The frenzied realism of this crossing of the American West demonstrates its identity and singularity.
In charge, Mark L. Smith, the co-writer of The Revenantsigns a story of incredible darkness, with characters chiselled with poorly sharpened machetes. Behind the heroes who reveal themselves little by little gravitates a whole gallery of characters who, for many, have exchanged what humanity may have remained for the most vile cowardice. Few souls to save down here!
-On camera, Peter Berg (22 Miles, Deepwater) delivers six fast-paced, 50-minute episodes. His camera twirls, breaks the codes of framing, immortalizes polished and bistreaked, almost monochromatic images. These add to the darkness of this series which stinks of slurry and rotting corpses, which smells of alcohol, filth and animal skin.
In the lens, the duo Sara/Betty Gilpin (discovered in Glow and recently seen as an intrepid nun in the series Ms. Davis on Warner TV), and Isaac/Taylor Kitsch (Navy Seal dans The Terminal List on Prime video) comes under fire.
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And survival in the Great West
And At the dawn of America hammers the last nails into the coffin of the old-fashioned western, this series in the form of survival tells another story, alongside the binary narratives where the good Cowboys face the bad Indians. A much more nuanced story in which religion finds a decisive place in a collective story where a woman also plays the leading role.
