Television Review: The Secret Fate of All Life (True Detective, S1X05, 2014)
The Secret Fate of All Life (S1x05)
Airdate: 16 February 2014
Written by: Nic Pizzolatto
Directed by: Cary Jo Fukunaga
Running Time: 57 minutes
Following the spectacular denouement of Episode Four of True Detective, showrunner Nic Pizzolato and director Cary Joji Fukunaga faced a formidable challenge. The fifth instalment of this anthology series needed either to surpass its predecessor in sheer spectacle or to impress its audience through alternative, more subtle means. Crucially, the creative team had to eschew cheap narrative tricks and the sort of soap-operatic subplot complications that a mini-series—constrained by economic and temporal limitations—can ill afford.
It must be said that they have largely succeeded. The Secret Fate of All Life delivers precisely the turning point that viewers anticipated, and whose absence had, at moments, risked frustrating those less accustomed to unconventional approaches to the police procedural genre. Formally speaking, this episode concerns itself with the central investigation: Detectives Marty Hart and Rustin Cohle perform the very duty for which they were introduced to the series—they identify a murderer and bring him to justice.
Yet what proves most fascinating is not the what but the how. The preceding episode demonstrated how the investigation had compelled the pair to venture into the criminal "heart of darkness," crossing to the other side of the law themselves—"borrowing" drugs from the evidence locker, abusing informants, and ultimately participating in armed robberies in an effort to gain the confidence of lowlifes. In this latest chapter, the duo elevates their disregard for legal and police protocols to an entirely new level, culminating in a brief but disturbingly effective action sequence that stands as both a professional and personal triumph for the two men.
The effectiveness of this sequence owes much to Fukunaga's tripartite presentation: we witness the events as they actually occurred, followed by Hart's and Cohle's respective accounts to investigators in 2012. The audience swiftly apprehends that the detectives' recollections, whilst nearly identical to one another, diverge significantly from the truth of what transpired. This congruity in their falsehoods strongly implies a shared secret—something that subsequently drove both men to abandon their police oaths and the letter of the law. Fukunaga conveys this revelation with economy and precision, relying chiefly upon the exceptional performances of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.
Ultimately, the fact that both detectives lied in their official reports matters not a whit. The outcome of their actions is such that they are regarded as heroes; indeed, a portion of the audience will likely deem them heroic precisely because of what they chose to conceal. This professional success bleeds into their private lives, with both men experiencing a kind of rebirth as family men—or at least as something approximating "normal" citizens.
However, this remains but the fifth of eight episodes, and even the less seasoned viewer will recognise that the narrative is far too intricate to be resolved so neatly. The latter half of the episode advances the plot by seven years: one detective grapples with male pattern baldness and a "problematic" daughter, whilst the other, to his profound horror, discovers during routine questioning that the murder case may never have been solved at all—that the killer might still be at large.
For those insufficiently intrigued by this possibility, the screenplay offers a still more explicit provocation: that one of the detectives may himself be the murderer, or that the entire investigation constituted an elaborate product of his manipulation. The nihilistic philosophy with which he has bombarded his unfortunate partner may, in this reading, be nothing more than an insidious method of psychological control.
By leaving all these possibilities suspended, the episode concludes with a scene that poses the appropriate questions, albeit in a manner that lacks a certain restraint. Yet should the remaining three episodes furnish coherent answers to these mysteries, the occasional imperfections of The Secret Fate of All Life will prove entirely forgivable.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in the original Croatian version is available here.)
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo
Substack https://draxster.substack.com/
LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9