[don draper crying]

The opening is one of the best in recent TV drama: an ethereally handsome figure of mysterious origins, dressed in an elegant Edwardian three-piece tweed suit and newsboy cap, sits bareback on a steaming black horse. Slowly, he rides through a period urban wilderness; he is a man, from the way he rides, with a close association with the spirit of nature. In a few wonderful moments we’re given a figure with some archetypal power that reflects that seemingly universal need for heroes of a certain kind. And when Nick Cave starts singing about a tall, handsome man with a red right hand riding through the slums and the ghettos, we know we’re in for something special. The scene is suggestive of some kind of western, though the setting and the cinematic look suggests Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York but, at the same time, there’s a Sergio Leone Once Upon a Time in America feel about it. Then a graphic tells us we are in Birmingham in 1919 and the man — he turns out to be Tommy — trots his horse into an industrial seaside wasteland of spewing fires, mills and derricks; uniformed coppers nod at him, doff their helmets, bid him good morning. It’s breathtaking…

If there was a storm coming right now, a big storm, from behind those mountains, would it matter? Would it change anything?

Why haven’t you called Jo yet?

The Irishman (2019), dir. Martin Scorsese