Godless is a short series on Netflix about a murderous outlaw hunting for his ex-protege, who is hiding out in a town inhabited almost entirely by women.
Of all the genres, the American Western seems the most vulnerable, many claiming it dead, then revived, then dead again (much like some of the heroes of the movies themselves). They seem to come and go with a cyclical flavor where audiences embrace and then reject the premise, the whole thing admittedly funneled down to a few basic tropes that all seem anchored to. You’ve got your dusty isolated town, populated by lowlifes, whores, drunks, questionable lawmen, and plenty of shootouts. You’ve got some desperate sole in need of saving, and of course, a lone figure riding in with great mystery, who saves the day. Or ruins it. Cut and print.
However, there are those that prop up occasionally in trying to do the tentpoles right, and while they might cling to a few select standards, manage to find something fresh in the mix in giving their stories some edge. That brings us to 2017’s Godless, a 7-episode series on Netflix that abides by several unbendable laws of the genre but veers just off the path enough to make it something significant. Trust me on this. If you’ve been on the fence or just have no interest in Westerns, you’re gonna want to give this a shot. You’ve read this far already. Why not?
The story is relatively compact, with a man named Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) on the run from a gang he used to ride with, having betrayed them. He’s hiding out on the horse ranch of a single mother named Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery), living with her mixed-race son Truckee (Samuel Marty) and his Paiute grandmother Iyovi (Tantoo Cardinal). They aren’t far from a small mining town called La Belle, which has recently suffered a terrible tragedy, leaving almost all the men dead. The women run the town now, save for a nearsighted sheriff named Bill McNue (Scoot McNairy) and his young, gun-slinging deputy Whitey Winn (Thomas Brodie-Sangster).
Hanging over all this is the leader of the ferocious gang, a ruthless man named Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels), who presides over a horde of thirty bandits and murders, all on the hunt for Goode and letting nothing and no one get in their way. These are very bad men. Shockingly so.
The opening five minutes of episode one, called “An Incident At Creede,” is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen, the sheer audacity of the imagery mixed with a fever pitch need to know just what on Earth happened is almost unbearable. It is one of the best ‘hooks’ in storytelling ever made, masterfully executed with style and substance … and all done with barely a word spoken. You simply can’t for a moment consider looking away and not wonder where it will take you. And it takes you.
From there, it slows its stallions a bit to let the story unfold with a kind of elegance not often seen on the small screen. Would you think a sequence of a boy trying to ride horse could have anything compelling about it after say … thirty seconds? How about a minute? Godless makes it so for seven, with an absolutely riveting set piece that, once again, with hardly a word, elevates this deceptively simple lesson into a moment of pure magic, making it far more than what it seems. And that apparently was the rule in how the filmmakers took to unspooling their tale, convince us of one thing and then showing us it’s not.
That’s not to say there’s narrative trickery underfoot, cheating us with some lazy or contrived deception. Not at all. What’s so clever about how the true beats of the show emerge is how well they are delivered. It’s about assumptions writer/director Scott Frank knows we will make in defining and aligning our judgments with these characters. And there are plenty of them, both characters and judgments. You think you know everything about lanky Whitey Winn and his cocky flair for gun tricks. You think you completely ‘get’ what Bill is all about from the moment we meet him. You’re sure you understand why Alice is so dang tough. And you’re convinced you have it all figured out about Frank and his motivations. But you don’t. You absolutely don’t.
These are only a handful of the many people who come to dominate the story. There’s also Bill’s sister Mary Agnes (Merritt Wever), who has taken on a sort of ‘male’ mythos in the town after her husband died with the rest, her affection for someone else causing a stir. There’s the little community of Blackdom, just down the road, a group of African Americans trying to keep clear of it all and farm in peace, they themselves with a history that comes into play … and a daughter who triggers trouble.
It’s impossible to delve too deeply into the highlights and not tell too much, but these should be tempting dangling threads you want to pull on in learning more. Godless is a masterful piece of limited art that won both Weaver and Daniels Emmy Awards, and rightfully so. Weaver is a powerful presence, yet Daniels does things that would in the hands of probably any other, be a parody, his contortions and mannerism so delicately balanced, its attracts with a kind of new gravity, drawing you into his menace with a blissful glee. If this were a film, he’d have an Oscar on his mantle.
Many complain that Netflix doesn’t have high quality content, and sure, there’s a lot on the menu that deserves a skip. However, there is plenty well worth watching, some probably not quite as visible, Godless being one of them. If you’re looking for a short investment that both challenges and entertains, you simply can’t go wrong. Mount up and take a ride.