‘American Primeval’ Review: Brutal, Bleak Western Series Is Exhausting to Watch
Hollywood’s fascination with tales of the Wild West, a vast and majestic land that was “tamed” by daring pioneers, peaked sometime in the middle of the last century. But it’s stuck with us as foundational American mythology, one of the cornerstones of our cultural identity. Today, of course, these romantic visions of life on the trail have been challenged by more realistic accounts of violence, disease, exploitation, and genocide. The new Netflix miniseries American Primeval is set in a particularly bloody time and place in the saga of Western colonization, and there’s nothing pretty or palletable about it. Quite the contrary — it’s hard to imagine that the real thing could’ve been any uglier than this. It’s grim beyond realism or even nihilism, pushing into the realm of willful narrative cruelty. And while some of the greatest art is built around death and despair, American Primeval is not nearly artful enough to compensate for how miserable it is to watch.
The six-part series takes place in 1857, in the part of Utah Territory that is now Wyoming. During this time, the United States’ claim on this land was contested not only by the indigenous Shoshone, Utes, and Paiutes, but by Brigham Young, the appointed Governor of Utah Territory and sitting President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Caught in the crossfire, as the opening title cards explain, are countless innocent men, women, and children. The ensemble drama is a tapestry of interweaving tragedies in which characters are tempered by these harsh conditions until they find the strength to kill before they can be killed. This isn’t the only lesson to be learned, but it’s ultimately the only one that matters, as the story punishes practically every act of mercy or kindness. As much as it condemns the cycle of violence, American Primeval’s clearest thesis isn’t that innocents die in conflict, it’s that innocence gets you killed. That is, unless you kill it first.
Our tutor in this is Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), a grizzled mountain man who has already endured his own heart-hardening ordeal before the series begins. Isaac takes reluctant responsibility for Sara Rowell (Betty Gilpin), a woman making her way West from Philadelphia with her pre-teen son Devin (Preston Mota). Though capably played, Isaac is a stock gritty action lead, a highly proficient killer and survivor who pushes people away because he can’t bear any more loss. However, Sara isn’t exactly a damsel in distress. She’s wanted for murder, a purveyor of righteous violence, which in this story is the only way anyone establishes that they deserve to live. Together with young Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), who’s on the run after killing her sexually abusive father, the party treks through the snowy mountains, where more blood and guts await them.
As they travel, tensions rise around the tiny town of Fort Bridger, founded by real historical folk hero Jim Bridger (Shea Wigham). This is where the benevolent US Army officer Edmunds Dellinger (Lucas Neff) has stationed his garrison, tasked with holding the territory against displaced indigenous peoples and the ever-expanding religious fiefdom of Brigham Young (Kim Coates). Fort Bridger is a stop along the trail to Young’s promised Zion, along which travel Abish Pratt (Saura Lightfoot-Lyon) and her husband Jacob (Dane DeHaan), who may adore her, but never actually asks if this is what she wants. Nearby, Shoshone leader Winter Bird (Irene Bedard) is trying to keep her people out of the fighting, while her son Red Feather (Derek Hinkley) refuses to surrender to the people who murdered most of his civilization. The place is a powder keg, and the only question is which party will be the one to light the fuse.
This web of conflicts is far more interesting and specific than Issac and Sara’s generic journey through the wilderness, and boasts some memorable performances. Saura Lightfoot-Lyon gives one of the show’s best as the only woman in her community who seems awake to her own subjugation. Without ever speaking of it, she conveys the complex emotions of a person being kept by someone kind, but kept nevertheless. She embodies American Primeval’s recurring theme of choosing the least awful of unattractive options. Irene Bedard has the undeniable presence of a great leader as Winter Bird, and Dane DeHaan and Shea Wigham both deliver as characters squarely within their established types. Even a bit part like Grey Fox (Jeremiah Bitsui), the US Army’s Shoshone interpreter, has some texture to it.
As a production, American Primeval doesn’t have any obvious weak links. The environment and costuming are spare and natural in a way that sniffs of historical accuracy. (I’m no period expert myself.) The mostly handheld photography helps to place the viewer in the moment and on their back foot with the characters while still keeping all of the action legible. The narrative is deeply unpleasant, but the characters are consistent and each tragic twist is forecast — if not by a specific event, but by the inevitability that every character’s choice will have the worst possible outcome. (Unless they choose to kill someone, that usually works out okay.)
This is what makes American Primeval so exhausting to watch. There’s no suspense to any of the drama, because in order to have suspense you have to hold onto some measure of hope. Here, there is only dread, and that’s not a state most people will want to sustain for six hours.
Historically, it’s important to desanitize the American fantasy of the Wild West so that we can confront and — to the extent still possible — make amends for the atrocities, big and small, of our own history. But there is an uglier side to this reclamation of our country’s violent past, one that regards the new historical cowboy with blood under his nails just as reverently as the whitewashed version sold to us by Old Hollywood. Cowboy stories taught us to aspire to ruggedness — American Primeval simply paints a more extreme, probably more accurate portrait of that ruggedness, and then punishes any character who fails to live up to it. This doesn’t complicate the historical narrative around American pioneers, it merely transfers the reverence from gallant heroes in white hats to merciless killers who did what they had to to survive. It feeds back into the twisted modern extrapolation of the Wild West fantasy, the zombie apocalypse in which only those willing to kill and rob their neighbors will survive.
I don’t believe that this is an intended part of American Primeval writer/creator Mark L. Smith’s political messaging. The text clearly condemns the displacement and genocide against America’s indigenous cultures, and is downright damning against the LDS church and their 19th century land grab. It is critical of religion as a tool for political power, and while its one on-screen representative of the US government is an honorable man, it’s clear that his sympathy for the Shoshone is not shared by his commanding officers, whose orders he intends to follow. Its respectful portrayal of the Shoshone alone is likely enough to get American Primeval condemned by right wing nuts as “woke.” Nevertheless, it does, by and large, function by the rules that the right asserts to be natural. The strong survive, the weak perish, and anyone begging for help is probably out to get you.
Realistic? I sure hope not.