Red Riding Trilogy

By rights, this sordid saga of a whole culture of corruption, perversion, and violence ought to be revolting and unwatchable.  Instead, it is immersive and compulsively watchable.  The three films -- aired first on Channel 4 in Britain in 2009, then theatrically released in the U.S., and now on DVD (with indispensable subtitles) – cover a decade of evildoing and official malfeasance in Yorkshire.  Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 was shot on Super 16 and directed by Julian Jarrold; 1980 on 35mm by James Marsh; 1983 on hi-def video by Anand Tucker.  Nonetheless they are very much of a piece, bound together in Tony Grisoni’s adaptation of David Peace’s cult-fave series of noir novels, collectively portraying a society going to hell under the toast and boast:  “This is the North.  Where we do what we want.”  Several serial killers are on the loose, and the police are more interested in exploiting the crime sprees than solving them.  People who investigate the web of corruption and fear are drawn in, chewed up, and spit out; primarily Andrew Garfield in 1974, Paddy Considine in 1980, and David Morrissey in 1983, leading effective acting ensembles in each, with peripheral characters moving to the foreground in sequence.  These films are like David Fincher’s Zodiac in using the pursuit of a serial killer as the key to understanding a whole community of characters.  Events always stay tantalizingly short of full comprehension, as the viewer stumbles through a universe without fixed points of truth or morality.  It’s grisly to be sure, even more in scenes of police torture than in the murders and sexual abuse, but not based on gratuitous shocks.  It’s confusing and meant to be, but dense with observation of personal and societal malaise.  (Apparently the confusion is enhanced because the novel 1977, which fills in the story of the Yorkshire Ripper, was omitted.)  The whole is a dark odyssey through a world of filth, and yet engrossing and perversely redemptive.  (MC-77)  If you want to get deep into the whole Red Riding cosmos, I recommend this essay by premier film historian David Thomson.