I have no close memory -and certainly not from this year (2019)- of experiencing a constant feeling of admiration as the minutes go by on a screen, of knowing that you are facing a work that simply corresponds to another order of quality. The narrative level that The Wire executes is exceptional; It has an epic volume, it is a forest of realities converging in the total circumstance: life in Baltimore, the life of all. Striving to be substantially tangible, The Wire develops with dazzling caution, not afraid to grow too big and push everything too high, but instead makes it its attempt. Life on this trivial planet is necessarily complex and diverse to make us unaware of it; the realities are so many that whoever is not pushed by his own circumstance will be in an inevitable ignorance of the real human struggle. The Wire features everyday cards in an apparently random episode to play the hand and synthesize the plot two seasons later; The Wire shows you a man constantly wanting to redeem himself and failing, taking minute steps in the passage of the days, weeks, months, stumbling and turning four steps back, suffering from being unable to be more, and returning not much beyond where he ever managed to get in Four seasons, to teach you that this is how also redemption looks, that this is a story of a man who seeks to grow: that this is Bubbles. His arc is simply moving, admirable; it is the fight of man.
How a daily eventuality causes the concretion of a whole political plot; how a negligent former detective and a former drug addict cross their redemption in a school, now as a teacher and a tutor; how a letter waits patiently for stations to enter the game, how the background of an old and forgotten friend McNulty feels so organic and plausible, how death and crime and drug trafficking and corruption and kindness and empathy and indifference and love are still truly present, making everything significant to the extent that those who live want to be. It's like this, life is like that, not big closing acts, not dramatic twists, not total answers; life is all the big and small Baltimore stories, life is everyone's constant trivial battle: life is The Wire. That is the premise that at this point I can not deny myself to confirm, that since the end of season three I began to suspect as indisputable: The Wire is the best television series ever made. The Wire is the cuspid of audiovisual narrative, yesterday and today.
Rate: 10/10.
25 out of 38 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink