Watchmen
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One of my earliest memories is of my father strangling my mother.
I can remember sunlight streaming in through the screen door of our small home.
I can remember my mother squirming on the floor.
But I can never quite make out his particulars.
Instead, hes a shadow smeared across the early years of my life, then a yawning absence.
So much of my earlier life was about exorcising the remnants of him.
But lately Ive come to wonder about what cant be so easily hidden away.
What have I inherited from this man, this stranger?
A certain rhythm to my steps?
The gnawing loneliness inside of me?
The prickling anger Ive so often fashioned into a cudgel I turn against myself?
This Extraordinary Being, directed by Stephen Williams and written by Damon Lindelof andCord Jefferson, inspires such imaginings.
It starts with a whisper.
Reality warps at the edges of Angelas vision.
Then Angela falls into Wills past, which is rendered in practically aglow black-and-white cinematography.
Its 1938, New York City.
It heightens the mood, which becomes dreamlike and poignant.
It makes the juxtapositions that much sharper.
Each color holds connotations, too.
Braided throughout the episode are flashes fromthe Tulsa Massacre.
But alongside this desire for justice is a deep well of anger, which June recognizes.
This is a part of her inheritance.
A group of white officers take Fred off of Wills hands.
Soon afterward, Fred is outside, jauntily mocking Will and his lack of power.
Will protests to the desk sergeant, even bringing up the cyclops symbol the cops exchange.
For Will, the past is always present.
But Will isnt safe.
Turning the corner, the officers spill from their car to beat Will with batons and kicks and fists.
The sharp sound design and haunting song heighten the brutality of this moment.
Were plunged into Wills point of view as hes being dragged toward a mammoth tree.
The scene is gothic in its constitution.
We see through Wills eyes when the hood goes over his head.
We see through Wills eyes when hes being strung up the tree.
Stumbling through an alley after his lynching, Will comes across a mugging.
The jazz score erupts alongside him, and Hooded Justice is born.
The noose around his neck loses its totemic meaning when you believe Hooded Justice to be white.
June asks Will why he put the hood back on.
When Fred turns a shotgun on him, Will crashes through the window.
Time slows to a halt as glass glitters around Will.
Wills reputation as Hooded Justice grows until one day Nelson Gardner, a.k.a.
Captain Metropolis, visits his home.
Nelson wrongly believes Will is just the cop supplying Hooded Justice information, not Hooded Justice himself.
This earns a hearty laugh from June.
But its also a relationship shaped by Nelsons own racism.
Theres also the crucial scene of Will joining the Minutemen during what amounts to a press visit.
Nelson cuts Will off when he tries to speak about the insidious reach of the KKK.
A cop sneers that this is what happens when you put animals in the same cage.
There have been numerous scenes of characters watching things and being affected by it on some level.
Im afraid youre going to have to solve black unrest all on your own, Nelson says condescendingly.
Afterwards, Will goes into Freds warehouse to find the means of production for the mesmerism projectors.
Then he burns the warehouse to the ground, lugging a projector home.
But Wills rage hasnt been exorcised.
Its an inheritance he doesnt want to give, a burden no one else should shoulder.
But it didnt get rid of it.
It just fed it.
She takes Marcus to return to Tulsa without Will.
Im going to take you home now, honey.
(I assume this to be a memory of Angelas, not Wills.)
