I've actually resisted watching it for a while, to the point where I wasn't sure it'd even still be on HBO Max. I didn't even twig that it was a prequel to the Sopranos until about the fifth time I saw the trailer, and then I was even less sure that I wanted to watch it: I have a bit of a complicated relationship with the Sopranos, and wasn't convinced I'd enjoy this.
On the other hand, I kept seeing memes relating to it, and the final straw was listening (yesterday) to Marc Maron interviewing David Chase. There were a lot of interesting insights (like the big mystery of who Ray Liotta plays in this movie, or the point where Silvio Dante decides on a hairpiece), but listening to them talk about it made me think that it would be a little more than just a romp through the Sopranos's greatest (unseen) hits.
First of all, I love the casting in this movie. James Gandolfini's son Michael is quite enjoyable as a young Tony, while Alessandro Nivola is magnetic as young Tony's mentor Gentleman Dick Moltisanti (the father of Christopher!). I'm also loving Leslie Odom Jr as Harold McBrayer, the foil for Dick's machinations and the center of the racial subplot running through the movie. The best of the supporting characters are Jon Bernthal as Tony's father Johnny, and Vera Farmiga as his mother Livia - Farmiga, in particular, is an MVP here, because she does a great job of evoking not only Nancy Marchand's older version of the character from the series, but she's also made up to look exactly like Edie Falco, who played Tony's wife. When I saw her in the trailer, I honestly thought it was Edie Falco at first (Maron said the same thing on his podcast, btw).
I'm also enjoying that racial subplot. It takes place against the backdrop of the Newark race riots in the 60s, and I've found I really like these period pieces showing how the different communities interacted at the time. Other examples would be Boardwalk Empire, and the critically maligned Green Book.
The movie also makes the show look better to me, which I wasn't totally expecting. I need to qualify that statement, though, because I don't want to give the impression that I don't like the Sopranos. I just don't think it's the second-coming of the gangster movie that people have been saying for twenty years.
I've seen all of it, of course, though not in order. As a result, I saw certain characters die before they were introduced, and saw the beginnings of certain other storylines. But I don't think that's why I'm so conflicted about - rather, I thought some of the storylines in the show didn't hold up as well as they could have, and I thought the Wire (my absolute favorite show ever) had tighter storytelling.
What I admired about the Sopranos was the family drama, and the way Tony corrupted everything and everyone around him, and also simply the way this was a story about the American Dream. He was both absolutely steeped in it, by virtue of achieving it through dishonest means and by constantly striving for the trappings of it, while also being stuck on the outside of it... again, by virtue of his criminality but also the way Italian-Americans have adapted to the US. The most devastating episode for me was the one where Tony befriends all these middle-class professional guys, but realizes they're getting off on hanging out with the gangster.
Another one that came back to my mind was the one where we see Dr Melfi's family, and how they live their Italian-ness; David Chase mentioned it in the podcast, saying that her family represented a strand of Italians who'd tried to "pass" by Americanizing, much more than Tony's type of Italians. I'm a completely different type of Italian-American, maybe closer to German by virtue of having come from the north and having arrived in the 1980s, but these questions have been present in my family, too.
Anyway, now that I'm almost done with Many Saints, I'm wondering if it'll be time to rewatch the Sopranos soon - I'll have a lot of the stories fresh in my mind when I do. Maybe I'll appreciate the show more on the second go?
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