I Am The Night: Myth and Trauma [Review]

As a full-fledge #murderino, I was incredibly excited to watch TNT’s I Am The Night. It did not disappoint, but now that I’ve had some time to process my thoughts, I am even more in love with Patty Jenkin’s take on LA Noir. Murder, a secret adoption, incest…Patty Jenkin’s I Am The Night has all the ingredients of a classic myth, and a mythic tale it is. Jenkins weaves gritty noir drama with iconic mythic imagery in this almost unbelievable story based on the real-life experiences of Fauna Hodel (India Eisly). But, as with most myths, there is tremendous suffering for those who live at the whims of the gods, and the trauma of violence lingers. These themes of myth and trauma are what I see as the defining elements that elevate this limited series beyond its true crime origins.

Myth

Pat, a young mixed-race teenager, learns that she isn’t who she’s always believed. Her quest for identity takes her to a world beyond her imagination. An elusive, untouchable grandfather lives god-like in a palatial home on the hill where he wields tremendous influence over the powerful and is surrounded by a bacchanal of the beautiful and the corrupt. Los Angeles is mired in a war over race, ending with a city on fire. She doesn’t start to make sense of things until she meets up with the seeming hero of this tale, Jay Singletary (Chris Pine), a down and out reporter who is himself a victim of Hodel’s power.

Fauna travels from the small town she’s grown up in to find her real parents. In Los Angeles she tries to find answers from her grandfather’s ex-wife, but Corinna only seems to answer in self-serving half-truths that perhaps she even tells herself. Despite inviting her to LA himself, grandfather George Hodel avoids Fauna once she arrives, but his acolyte Sepp (Dylan Smith) seems to be lurking around every corner. With Jay, she finds her mother Tamar (Jamie Ann Allman), who has hidden herself away in a paradise far from her father’s influence. When Fauna finally discovers all the secrets of who she is, it’s more terrible than she could have imagined. But as she attempts to flee LA, she is captured and taken to Hodel, whose desires seem bound to consume Fauna.

Everything plays like a modern adaptation of Greek drama, where Fauna and her hero seem destined to come to a tragic end. Hodel’s labyrinthine home has fauna trapped and running to escape Hodel. Will she be able to slay this Minotaur? Jenkin’s has crafted a myth so tragic that it sparks a conscience in even Billis’ cold heart. But myths don’t end like a Hollywood fairy tale, and the only victory in this tale might be to survive.

Trauma

When, after a series of terrible truths, Fauna is reeling from learning the worst of them all, Jay explains the unpleasant reality of our world. He says:

“Sometimes you catch a bad one, Fauna.”

Then he tells us, “Most people, normal people, they don’t know it. they’ve never seen it. They feel it, just once at the end. You found out the truth, Fauna. Death and Evil, they are around us all the time. and the line between us is as thin as tissue paper. You got the bad news and you got to know it for the rest of your life.” This truth runs through I Am The Night and relates to so much of the trauma that we see. There is no justice in the suffering. The evil go unpunished, and the there is little relief for the good.

It starts with Jimmy Lee (Golden Brooks), who’s once bright future was destroyed, leading to a life of regret and anger. The powerful and conflicting emotions Brook’s gives Jimmy Lee show us how her own personal tragedy prevents Fauna’s mother from showing her love or giving her the protection she needs. We also see the lasting trauma of institutional racism in the struggles Jimmy Lee had raising a mixed-race child in a world of racial injustice. Jimmy Lee responds to trauma with cruelty and alcoholism, like so many others have.

Jay is a classic example of PTSD, which was portrayed exceptionally well in so many ways in this series. Ohls (Jay Paulson) functions well in the world, but is clearly haunted by his experiences at war, which is what drives his sense of obligation to be Jay’s guardian. Jay sees his past everywhere, in the Korean soldiers that follow him, in Sepp’s lingering ghost, but most of all in the perceived enemies he feels he has to fight at every turn. And in the end, like Tamar, he chooses to run away from reality to find peace, but he can never fully escape.

Fauna is the brightest spot in all this darkness. The hero of her own story. Unlike the others, we see her experiencing her trauma, but we also see how she chooses not to let it or anything else define her. Where her mother and Jay survive by escaping, Fauna takes hold of her own life and finds a way past the pain and struggle. She says, “We keep struggling, making do, and going on, cause that’s all there is. The devil is something we all carry in our hearts. We have to make peace with them Jay, we have to find another way.” She finds her own way through the pain to life and love.

I Am The Night is streaming on TNT through April 3.