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By PAUL BRENNER
HBO Video has released the
fourth season of David Chase's "The Sopranos" on a
four-disc set of thirteen episodes.
With "The Sopranos" not only does HBO have a
marketing bonanza on its hands, but a creative one
as well. With Chase at the helm "The Sopranos" has
steadily, season by season, eschewed its
run-of-the-middle network TV flourishes, and now,
in Season Four, the characters have deepened into
with a rich and novelistic complexity. By the
fourth season James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano has
become a towering, multi-layered and always
surprising iconic creation -- Gandolfini has
become an amalgam of Richard III, Falstaff, and
Titus. But in this season, Edie Falco's Carmela
Soprano casts off the last of her stereotypical
mob wife airs, and becomes the full-blown equal to
Tony in all his Shakespearean intensity -- Laura
Linney's Lady Macbeth inclinations in "Mystic
River" have nothing on Carmela who, by the end of
"Whitecaps" has become also both Ophelia and
Hamlet.
Chase also devilishly plays with viewer
expectations from Season Three, which threatened
to turn the series into an episodic television
version of second-tier Scorsese violence. Viewers
settling in to Season Four counting, hoping, for a
continuation of the bloodbaths of season three
will be sorely disappointed. Here Chase delays the
once counted upon killing spree until late in the
season, and although viewers hunting for gore will
not be disappointed by Ralphie's (Joe Pantoliano)
now legendary dispatching, the violence has been
tempered with a much more chilling but less
visceral emotional cruelty that the characters
liberally inflict upon each other.
Chase shifts the focus to Tony and Carmela's
marriage and the season insightfully and cuttingly
charts the deadening of love and the crumbling of
their relationship. And so do Tony's other family
relationships. With his personal life headed for a
dead end, he continually utilizes his money and
power to buy things for friends and family as to
elicit lying-to-his-face comments like, "Tony,
you're a great guy." What happens instead is that
by the end of the season, Tony is on the outs with
everyone; he has become -- in the words of Michael
Imperioli -- "a toxic person." And, in a sense,
the series has never been more violent, but the
violence is psychic as Tony's personal and blood
connections are marginalized and alienated,
culminating in the powerful matrimonial seppuku of
the season finale "Whitecaps." For filmmaking of
intelligence and unique sensibility, don't look to
films but to this HBO series.
Unfortunately, HBO Video has chosen to let the
power of the series stand on its own, only
providing marginal extras in this collection. In
all the thirteen episodes, only four are provided
with audio commentary -- writer Terence Winter on
"The Weight," actor and writer Michael Imperioli
on "Everybody Hurts," writers Robin Green and
Mitchell Burgess on "Whoever Did This," and
creator/writer David Chase on "Whitecaps." Aside
from that, all that is offered are the traditional
skimpy extras (a list of awards and nominations,
cast and filmmaker biographies, and web links).
For such a great emotional rollercoaster ride of a
season, there has to be something more to say.
Audio is presented in English Dolby 5.1, English
2.0, Spanish 2.0 and French 2.0. The collection is
subtitled in English, Spanish, and French. |
