True Detective - Seeing Things

“Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this... meat. To force a life into this... thresher…

…So my daughter, she spared me the sin of being a father “

“Sometimes I think I'm just not good for people, that it's not good for them to be around me. I wear 'em down. They... they get unhappy.”

– Rust Cohle

What really hits home with me as I watch the first season of True Detective is McConaughey’s wear and tear, especially during the interviews with Detectives Maynard Gilbough (Michael Potts) and Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) in 2012. Seeing the years of drug use, self-destruction, alcoholism, and bleak worldview, McConaughey’s Rust Cohle looks as if he bottomed out, admittedly living in a room in a bar. The dead daughter, difficult marriage that dissolved into divorce, descent into “narco duty” (where he cops to killing drug scum, redacted by the “Feds”) and drug abuse, trip to a psychiatric hospital in Lubbock, and transfer to Louisiana where he has “visions” (because of his use of drugs, such as Quaaludes, Cohle sometimes experiences the world around him “altered” and “askew”). The visions can be such as the sky “lighting up” bright or a flock of birds forming a spiral similar to what was seen on the victim, whose case Cohle and Hart are investigating, Doris, a young woman found in the first episode, mutilated and presented with antlers. A burn-gutted church found just distance from a bridge has a lady with antlers painted on a wall…a flier potentially for that church is found in Doris’ diary. Cohle and Hart wonder if she was being drugged and what she was hallucinating explains why she writes in such outré prose in the pages of her tome.

I simply find McConaughey mesmerizing. He really takes his Rust Cohle’s unique form of speak, applying a grim darkness, his tenor and countenance quite methodical, reflective, analytical, contemplative, and warts-and-all honest. What I like about his Cohle in 2012 is that there is nothing he feels the need to keep behind the veil of silence. He doesn’t seem to have any qualms in protecting himself. There’s no attachment to introverting the past, concealing it, walling it up out of fear of repercussions. Their 1995 case, a case as recognized in a twist in the previous episode as being solved with a murderer captured, is certainly of significance because in 2012 Gilbough and Papania have a [quite eerily] similar murder.

While the investigation is a crucial part of this HBO series, there is so much more here. Hart, a detective having an affair with a clerk at a courthouse (Alexandra Daddario, providing a nude scene), tells Gilbough and Papania that a cop, because of what he sees (the cesspool, humanity at its worst), must unwind, needing to release tensions. This is essentially his excuse for having an affair with Lisa (Daddario), later at odds with his wife, Audrey (Michelle Monaghan), over suspicious behavior. Audrey senses something’s wrong. She’s no idiot. Of course, Hart can use the “new case” as an excuse to come home late or work his angle of coming and going at odd hours. When Cohle later calls him on a certain “pussy scent”, Hart crashes him against his locker, believing he is “badmouthing” his wife. Cohle knows he could “snap the wrists”, clutching Hart’s hands in a way as to loosen the grip if need-be. The “no change in clothes” is what Cohle had identified, as Hart eventually exhales from his rage. This clearly is a sign of things to come. These two are bound to combust. Cohle is just too confrontational in certain aspects of speech and personality. No one wants to work with him, and the boss (Kevin Dunn) is fed up with his passing comments towards a task force interested in “exchanging notes” in order to determine if Doris’ murder is in relation to a spate of “Devil Worship activity”,  a cause/mission ongoing, started by the mayor who is also a very religious man. Cohle just can’t help himself. If he feels strongly about something, especially if it contradicts his own views or theories, Cohle has a hard time just keeping mum. But his way of dismissing others, his fellow cops, is in such an off-hand disregard, it is severely off-putting. So he doesn’t have any friends. There is a moment, though, where Cohle and Hart discuss Hart’s family, with Cohle realizing he likes being in their presence. He isn’t often without discord, tormented or free from the black cloud.

It goes on like that, you know the job. you're looking for narrative... uh... interrogate witnesses... parcel evidence... establish a timeline... build story... day after day.

  

-Martin Hart

Hart’s infidelity does appear to be a development certain to reach a boil. After some drinking at a poolhall, he calls up Lisa, wondering if he can come over. She agrees, flirtatiously, and he soon arrives, with handcuffs. Clearly this is important to Hart, the availability of such a young beauty, willing to play along. Certain to remain a delightful memory for many, the sexy Daddario removes her shirt and eventually shorts with no bra or panties. She does so alluringly, nice and slow for Harrelson’s lust-drunk detective, their naughty back-and-forth, the banter of naughty acceptance revealing a playful voluntary affair giving both “something to do” until Lisa can find a meaningful relationship. Lisa says this as much, disavowing Hart’s concerns about her “going out” because having an affair with a married man isn’t much of a future. When the conversation gets serious like that, you can see the displeasure for Hart because he enjoys his visits with her (obviously, few wouldn’t). The idea that this will eventually end is not a topic Hart wants to even configure.

There is an interesting scene where Hart, his wife and daughters, are visiting her parents. Audrey’s father goes on about society’s collapse to Hart while Audrey continues to grow infuriated and frustrated with her mother about her marriage. When Hart talks of needing to return to the “new case” that suspicion falls all over Audrey, later the two of them arguing about each other’s attitude. You can see the fractures. He appeals to her to give him peace and calm at home due to the stress of his job. But she wants him to be completely honest with her and not keep things from her. She just isn’t going to be the wife who doesn’t say anything when bothered by the prospects of possible misbehavior. Hart has another moment when he and Cohle visit a “bunny ranch”, located in the backwoods at a trailer park as a “hillbilly madam” seems to pimp underage girls to the local clientele. Hart takes the madam to task for using teenage girls for her trailer park brothel while Cohle secures Doris’ diary from another hooker she was friends with. Hart is passionate about those girls as the madam retorts that it was because they are given a choice about providing services for money instead of some guy having their bodies for free. Cohle, who doesn’t seem to have any moral disturbance about this whole situation, later visits an older hooker (he met at a bar, acquiring the ‘ludes from her), with bruises all over. She offers her own sexual services to Cohle, who isn’t interested. He does tell her that cops can be quite dangerous…without impunity. This hooker has sure seen the worst of mankind, seemingly experienced cops just taking from her body without care. Conversations on True Detective always speak about the dark side of humankind…the black soul of the underbelly.

5/5