Juan José Campanella is a filmmaker known above all for having been responsible for ‘The Secret in Their Eyes’, a film that in 2010 became the second Argentine film to win the award for best foreign film. However, since then he has mainly focused on a low-key television career, most notably the five episodes he directed of ‘Halt and Catch Fire’. But ‘Night Sky’ is not the great AMC series created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers whose main theme has been the tone of my mobile phone for years. Campanella directs the first two episodes of this series in which Sissy Spaceck and JK Simmons, 72 and 67 years old respectively, stand out. The fact that two “grandfathers” acting as “grandfathers” are its main protagonists already gives us an idea of what type of production it is: Relaxed and slow, mature and adult, and completely removed from the tics, gestures and sensations that predominate among the most popular audience. young, restless or impatient. A series with the aim of moving that takes its time to unfold through at least two clear parallel plot lines. One of them, the most substantial and also the most solid, the one backed and sustained by Spaceck and Simmons, is a drama marked by a discreet but fundamental fantastic element that is always as present as it is in the background. The other, more functional and not so convincing, would be a back-up story that serves as a complement to extend the duration of what could well have been a movie, a feeling that is increasingly present in a television environment that is beginning seem too keen to rescue failed film projects. The streaming war. The content. Maybe it’s not like that, but the feeling, as happened for example with ‘Only murdered in the building’, is what it is: that of a possibly good film turned into a not-so-stimulating series. In the same way as ‘Devs’ or ‘The Luminous’, this ‘Night Sky’ unfolds so calmly and peacefully that it’s hard to appreciate the moving image. Admittedly, it’s not a problem when Spaceck and Simmons are on stage and demonstrate why they’re the stars of the show. It has meaning and foundation, pulse and nerve, emotion and charm. As the series has in many moments. The problem is that we have a gazpacho for two but to which we have added water so that it is for four. That is, we have lost texture and density, and above all flavor. That flavor that could have had as a feature film, or even narrated in four, five or six episodes but that is somewhat insipid in the current eight. In part, because that second plot line that no one had asked for and that no one misses eats up a good part of its footage when it comes to being, because it is facing to converge at the end, it could have been summed up with a few brushstrokes. Or even suddenly bursting in, without warning. At this point, ‘Better Call Saul’ comes to mind, and how its episodes usually start. Or how the figure of Dennis Rader appeared in the second season of ‘Mindhunter’. However, in ‘Night Sky’, this second plot line, more than complementing, interrupts, hinders and cuts the roll, which, together with its already relaxed wandering, considerably reduces the emotional and generic impact of a story that by the time you get to the Metro has not yet left the portal. Sissy Spaceck and JK Simmons are grandparents, that goes without saying. It is also respected. And they are also two performers who make the wait worth the time: It is still a well-packaged series, with a good dramatic concept and a good, fantastic intrigue that progresses slowly but surely. At your own pace, but firm and determined. And as I said regarding ‘The Luminous’, it’s about patience. Just like its two wonderful protagonists, take it with due calm (from another time). The calm that perhaps we have lost with the advent of the Internet, the mobile phone and the impertinent abundance of content (to the detriment of simple but effective stories?).
By Juan Pairet Iglesias
@Wanchopex