The Lesser and Greater Aspects of the Many Saints of Newark
There’s been precious little to look forward to in life as of late. Even when there is, it often seems like we’re looking backward. Whether it’s stuff we used to eat, listen to, watch, attend, or otherwise engage in, after a hiatus of some several months of isolation and introspection, it shouldn’t surprise that there’s an existential pause prior to firing back up the old circus wheel and seeing whether the ride can still make our stomach jump.
Fortunately, sometimes we forget to have that moment of pause and just jump into it ourselves. So it was on October 1, when The Many Saints of Newark premiered on HBO. To be honest, the exigencies of my domestic situation distracted me from wondering: will I like this? Is it going to be worth the wait? Should I be in a theater?
Had I even thought about that last question, I’d be taking a down escalator that would surely turn into a spiral, leaving me sulking in the corner. But no, instead I didn’t even pause to think that thought—this was the Sopranos reboot/preboot, after all. Who had ever even had the luxury of watching that show in a theater, much less a garage space converted into a screening room for mafia DVDs?
A couple nights before, I had seen a small preview of The Many Saints on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The featured guest was Alessandro Nivola, the lead of sorts in what would turn out to be a somewhat rambling ensemble cast, one which couldn’t seem to decide who was there as a cameo and who actually had a part to play in the plot. Nivola, apparently a long-suffering leading man who had (up til now) missed out on the promised limelight somehow, played the amiable uncle to the protagonist of the prior series, now past 20 years old, but set in the future of this film, which came out in the good year of our Lord, 2021. The whole timeline confusion is best left unexamined. Otherwise, you might wonder how James Gandolfini’s son, Michael, could play a younger version of his father and thus get distracted from the really cool old cars that populate much of the screen time. For our purposes, the film takes place during some riots in downtown Newark in the late 60s, prior to the total white flight to the New Jersey suburbs where the now-fully flowered Soprano family would have their brick McMansion on a cul-de-sac, duck-filled pool and all.
Returning to Nivola, he plays Dickie Moltisanti, an ‘uncle’ of Tony’s and the son/nephew of two characters both (for no apparent reason) played by Ray Liotta. Ray’s eyes will still give you nightmares, but his character(s) here took a little too much from Scorcese’s Irishman, and not in a good way. Plenty of character actors around who can play their own age—Ray could’ve given this one a pass, or done without the ghostly makeup. I want to like Liotta; both the characters he played made that hard.
By way of plot synopsis: Dickie does a bunch of criminal stuff, influences his nephew negatively to the positive, we see a reimagined Newark in the 60s and all the attendant racial and ethnic turmoil. People fuck, they die, and they drive cool cars around. Tony’s mom, played here by the resplendent Vera Farmiga, has her beehive hair shot and we almost come to sympathize with his dad (deceptively played by Jon Bernthal, whose presence in the cast certainly seemed to demand more of a presence in the film). Tony does some of the rowdy schoolboy stuff that they talked about him doing in flashbacks in the original show. Junior Soprano, played by Corey Stoll (the guy who seems to be in everything), steals most scenes with his awkwardness-- only to be revealed (as we all already know) as truly diabolical. A sick fuck, as Tony used to say.
I can’t say on the whole that the film was much more than a distraction for a couple hours. Lots of time and energy went into it, the acting is stellar, some gaps are filled and other holes open. Ultimately, it all has to end, with the weirdo playing Silvio getting to play Santa just prior to the closing credits—which, like the original series, arrives all-too abruptly.. Even the final narration by Christopher (Michael Imperioli) gets stepped on by the theme music from the original series. A prequel, yes. A smooth segue to the show? Not exactly. There’s still 20 plus years left unaccounted for, but I guess those years don’t shape so much as give shape to the already drawn characters (re)created in this brief window of time. So be it. When I look back on this all 20 years from now, I hope to be less confused about who I was, and a bit more in control of what I would become. Depends on what happens with me and my uncle, I guess.
-MBL, 10/4/2021