Few writers have elevated the quality of cinema as Nic pizzolatto did. You can love him, you can hate him, but he will not leave you indifferent. Here are a few examples of the compelling dialogues that took place in the epic chef-d'oeuvre that is True Detective:
People... I have seen the finale of thousands of lives, man. Young, old, each one so sure of their realness. You know that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual with purpose and meaning. So certain that they were more than biological puppet. The truth wills out, and everybody sees. Once the strings are cut, all fall down.
This... This is what I'm talking about. This is what I mean when I'm talkin' about time, and death, and futility. all right there are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. 14 straight hours of staring at DB's, these are the things ya think of.
You ever done that? You look in their eyes, even in a picture, doesn't matter if they're dead or alive, you can still read 'em. You know what you see? They welcomed it... not at first, but... right there in the last instant.
It's an unmistakable relief. See, cause they were afraid, and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just... let go. Yeah they saw, in that last nanosecond, they saw... what they were.
You, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never more than a jerry rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go. To finally know that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that all your life, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain, it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person.
And like a lot of dreams, there's a monster at the end of it.
We all have life problems, life concerns, life worries, we want feel like we belong, so you buy the latest iPod, you go watch the latest movie, you dress according the latest style… And before you know it, you realize that there’s a lot of stuff that occupies your life now, purchases, career, rent, beating your neighbor in your fantasy league …
But meanwhile there is one thing that we’re guaranteed to forget: LIFE.
Ever Wondered Why Politicians Always Speak With Such a Deep Certainty, Even Though They're Always Wrong?
Detective Rustin Cohle: Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective at proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking.
Detective Martin Hart: Well, I don't use ten dollar words as much as you, but for a guy who sees no point in existence, you sure fret about it an awful lot; and you still sound panicked.
Detective Rustin Cohle: At least I'm not racing to a red light.
The Common Good
Detective Rustin Cohle: What do you think the average IQ of this group is, huh?
Detective Martin Hart: Can you see Texas up there on your high horse? What do you know about these people?
Rust: Just observation and deduction. I see a propensity for obesity. Poverty. A yen for fairy tales. Folks puttin' what few bucks they do have into a little wicker basket being passed around. I think it's safe to say nobody here's gonna be splitting the atom, Marty.
Marty: You see that. Your fucking attitude. Not everybody wants to sit alone in an empty room beating off to murder manuals. Some folks enjoy community. A common good.
Rust: Yeah, well if the common good's gotta make up fairy tales then it's not good for anybody.
Marty: I mean, can you imagine if people didn't believe, what things they'd get up to?
Rust: Exact same thing they do now. Just out in the open.
Marty: Bullshit. It'd be a fucking freak show of murder and debauchery and you know it.
Rust: If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of shit; and I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.
Marty: Well, I guess your judgment is infallible, piece-of-shit-wise. You think that notebook is a stone tablet?
Detective Rustin Cohle: What's it say about life, hmm? You gotta get together, tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the god damn day. Nah. What's that say about your reality, Marty?
Imaginary virtues hiding tangible crimes
All throughout history, we had the preaching class- and this is not exclusive the religious type- dividing us by race, religion, sexual orientation… Always, using the same trick: Inventing some sort of imaginary virtue to “justifies” the upcoming atrocities that they have planned.
After all it was all for God, or the country, the king…Etc.
That's how they always manage to convince otherwise good people to commit all sort of horrific barbarities, by the simple fact of selling some type of imaginary tales about honor, pride, special-ness… Whereas the real motive was always money and power of course.
See, the preacher, he encourages your capacity for illusion. Then he tells you it's a fucking virtue. Always a buck to be had doing that, and it's such a desperate sense of entitlement, isn't it?
The Song Remains The Same
Detective Thomas Papania: You figure it's all a scam, huh? All them folks? They just wrong?
Rustin Cohle: Oh yeah! Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey, "He said for you to give me your fucking share." People... so god damn frail they'd rather put a coin in the wishing well than buy dinner.
Time is a Flat Circle
Detective Rust Cohle: You ever heard something called M-Brane theory detectives?
Detective Thomas Papania: No. That's over my head.
Detective Rust Cohle: It's like in this universe we process time linearly forward. But outside of our space time from what would be a fourth dimensional perspective time wouldn't exist. And from that vantage could we attain it? We see our space time would look flattened. Like a single sculpture of matter and super-position of every place it ever occupied. Our sentience is just cycling through our lives like carts on a track. See everything outside our dimension that's eternity. Eternity looking down on us. Now to us its a sphere but to them its a circle.
In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill... and you are reborn but into the same life that you've always been born into. I mean, how many times have we had this conversation, detectives? Well, who knows? When you can't remember your lives, you can't change your lives, and that is the terrible and the secret fate of all life. You're trapped... like a nightmare you keep waking up into.
Lessonslearned:
I have absolutely no freakin’ idea! How about you? What’s your take on this last one? I would love to hear your thoughts, but meanwhile, let us finish with the most important lessons of all:
Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning.
I hope you guys enjoyed this, see you all tomorrow, and meanwhile I leave you with a really cool song form the series Sound Track:
