In my life, “there’s an acute sense of time’s passage,” David Milch once remarked. “Things are important. You don’t want to be inconsequential in your perspective on things. I feel that with an increasing acuteness — that everything counts.” Milch, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2015, is the creator and writer of “Deadwood,” which after 10 long years has finally been brought to a glorious conclusion on HBO with “Deadwood: The Movie.” Time, how it changes life and how it reminds us of what is eternal, is its story.
In the title sequence of the original show, which aired from 2004 to 2006, a wild horse gallops at full speed through scenes of miners, drunks, gamblers, and wagons moving westward. Amid the grit and grime, images of life, hope, and despair, the horse races along before coming to a stop in the center of town. This horse is the spirit of Deadwood and of the American frontier. A spirit of rugged, untamed individualism.
Ten years later, modernity and “progress” have caught up with the Deadwood camp as a coal-fired locomotive belching thick black smoke races toward town while the movie’s opening theme plays. The future may be here, but the same spirit, now embodied in a speeding train, still runs throughout the camp.
The year is 1889, and the figures who guided the early years of Deadwood are gathered to celebrate South Dakota’s statehood. The story’s hero, Seth Bullock, is now marshal, and his friend Charlie Utter, compatriot of Wild Bill Hickok, now owns a piece of land where he plans to retire. Al Swearengen, de facto head of the camp, worn down by age and drink, still operates the Gem Saloon. The great villain, George Hearst, who brought murder and mayhem to Deadwood a decade ago, is back, now in the role of U.S. senator, with the aim of stringing telephone lines across the Black Hills.
Hearst fashions himself the bringer of progress, and nothing will stand in his way. “We’ve no say as to the pace of modernity’s advance. I myself am merely its vessel,” he states. Often seen upside down through the lens of a camera or warped through the blurred panes of a window, Hearst’s character reminds us that progress is not always good and is, in many cases, malignant. Bullock and others in the camp, while not afraid of the future, aim to stop Hearst and the evils he brings.
The movie itself is an epic poem, as its poetic language, markedly different in style and tone from the series, evinces. It is an ode to the Wild West. In this final chapter of the great American saga “Deadwood,” Bullock must once again take a stand for justice and the American spirit.
Utter’s murder by two hit men for refusing to sell his land to Hearst unleashes a wave of violence throughout the camp. Amid killing, treachery, and the hardships brought by the passage of time, Bullock and Swearengen must finally bring to a close the last war that needs fighting. Matching Hearst move for move, both men are continually faced with the choice to betray their values for their self-interest or to take a stand. Each time, they choose what is right. Making this decision, to preserve and embrace our values and independent spirit, is a constant struggle for every generation faced with the inevitability of change and the future. Milch, who knows all too well what time can bring, has crafted his poem to exhort us to remember those seminal values that built our country and still inhere in the title “American.”
In one of the most poignant moments, after Hearst is arrested for murder, beaten by a mob, saved by Bullock, and thrown in jail, a light snow drifts over the town of Deadwood. Although time has taken its toll, there is finally peace, a just serenity. Everything is as it should be.
This year, Milch told an interviewer that the artistic process is “the process of passing on, for better or worse, as well as one can, what you’ve learned.” The lesson of Milch’s epic poem is that greed, treachery, and violence only bring pain. Peace, life, and achievement come when we embrace timeless ideals, when we choose justice over mob violence and individualism over the acceptance of illegitimate authority. “Deadwood: The Movie” and its creator ask us to reckon with the question of how we will choose to meet the changes wrought by time. It reminds us that the wild, rugged, individual spirit still has a role to play in American life and its future.
Alexander Khan is an incoming student at Harvard Law School.
