We have the character elements of the noir genre in ample measure: a morally ambiguous, loveless world, populated by cynical and apathetic characters each driven by their own lusts and greed, the femme fatale who is sympathetic to the hero, mysterious damsels in distress, the aging patriarch with his insatiable ravenousness for power justifying his actions by appealing to the “natural order of things”, crooked cops, scummy goons, and nosey neighbors. So what does the director do here? Navdeep Singh has crafted a film dripping with nuances of life in a small desert town, and has used the metaphor of the desert to suggest the aridness and sterility of the life of the chief protagonist, Satyaveer Randhawa, underplayed superbly by Abhay Deol. The Noir (French for night, literally and figuratively standing for ‘black film’) genre gave us such Hollywood films like The Maltese Falcon and The Asphalt Jungle in the forties and fifties, and more recently the conventions of the genre have been reworked in neo noir films like the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
The theme of death that carries through the entire show is sure to give kids nightmares and the harshness of mortality is something best discussed with kids and not learned through the nature of a sinful TV show.Yes, in the fifties we had them for sure, notable amongst them being Baazi and Aar Paar, both directed by Guru Dutt, but they suffered from the fact that the mores of film making in India did not really allow the chief protagonist to be cynical, morally ambiguous, and deeply pessimistic about the world: a world that was jaded and characterized by an acute loss of faith in ‘universal’ values of love and justice.
SFU also contains some violence, but this is hardly displayed to excess. Infidelity is a major theme in the work with extreme rows between couples being a large part of the drama. The show frequently features themes such as anonomous sex, threesomes, sexual addiction, incest and general perversion. SFU also a high level of sexual depravity throughout. All the characters take drugs, even the mother. The drug use in SFU is experimental (many a time I had no idea what it was they were smoking) and presented without consequence, except that they can make you feel lousy the next day. The show tries to make you feel that this is down to the curse of 'being human' but the fact is they're just wicked people.ĭrugs are not as stated in the synopsis potrayed evenly. The characters while well written all have horrible personalitys and do very cruel things to each other. What families should know about Six Feet Under is that virtue is almost totally absent from the show. This is a great drama for mature viewers who can handle the show's heavy themes. Despite this, the good greatly outweighs the bad.
My only big problem with the series is once you hit season 3, the show starts losing momentum and almost feels like a soap opera at times things just sorta happen and some events are just ridiculous and would never happen. There are many emotionally intense sequences, and the series finale is a real tearjerker, too.
Anything inappropriate in this show is done to enhance the story, which is extremely well written.Īs far as quality goes, this is a fantastic drama/dark comedy that is extremely well acted and directed, with a big cast of flawed but relatable characters. Two of the main characters are gay and are often seen kissing or fondling one another. There is a good amount of violence/gore and nudity/sex, but nothing teenagers shouldn't be able to handle. If you feel your child is mature enough to handle complex themes like grief, the unpredictability of death, the meaning of life, infidelity, homosexuality, and dysfunctional family dynamics, they should be fine. This show should be fine for most teenagers. I marathoned this series last month and just finished it last week.
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