“The Autopsy" Found Profoundness in Friendship and the Right Actors to Build it.

“Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.” - That's the way David Fincher's seminal detective vs serial killer showdown “Seven” ends. In its own way My favorite episode of Guillermo Del Toro's captivating horror anthology “Cabinet of Curiosities” will end that way too. The episode is titled “The Autopsy”. It is a masterpiece of television horror. A bit of noir, a bit of a procedural, a bit of a buddy movie, and surprisingly a great superhero movie about the “super” in us when we have something worth fighting for, that ultimately proves the elegant co-existing relationship between what is ugly and what is beautiful. A great deal of which is accomplished by way of craft in direction and Goyer's language, and to my focus here - the graceful, poetically large performances hiding in the well detailed husks of normality.

The dread in “The Autopsy” is existential. It's both very specific and nebulous as bodily invasion usually is. It is specific in its terror, the taking of our bodies without our consent (The very idea of being both intimate with something and also non intimate because the thing has no interest in the knowing of you) and unspecific in its horror, the varied, multi-layered and ultimately nonsensical fear of death. The balm for the tension caused by these two competing themes is very specific, it is the indomitable spirit of friendship, of connection, which in this story is one thing the enemy never counted on, never saw coming, and neither do we. It is at this intersection of fear and security our protagonist Dr. Carl Winters (F. Murray Abraham) arrives at one Sheriff Nate Cravens (Glynn Turman) to take up the sword and prepare for battle. Neither we nor the protagonists know what they are here for and this makes for another tension as the story unravels these two become aware of each other and so too do we. The specter of death around and on the shoulders of both protagonists and antagonists, and this friendship, refreshing in its organic purity- is what makes the episode, and what makes all of this abundantly clear is in the performances of F. Murray Abraham and Glynn Turman.

The noir element makes it so the story unravels backward and forwards in time. Detail upon minor detail is discovered and piled up one after another until they coalesce into a clear understanding of what exactly is happening, still the thing we are introduced to right after the inciting incident is two friends reconnecting after years. Why? Because the writer and director want us to feel the connection between these two. The villainy and the heroism, the horror and the pleasure, intertwined and separate. The complexity is the central force of the narrative, and more importantly what is behind it. It is tied to their friendship and not just the bond in and of itself but what kind of bond. It's one built on principles and honesty the unusual kind that allows for unusual honesty wherein one cannot take themselves too seriously, where to some it could be seen as ugly to say as much. “You're so thin I could use you as a whip”. Interesting on two levels; it's bluntness and its inherent bite and how Winters will come to be Craven's whip of sorts. Its also in the way Dr. Winters upon being asked what’s going on with him thinks on it only a moment before telling his friend he has stomach cancer, (that most insidious and cruel villain) and most endearingly, and maybe most important to the story the way Dr. Winters corrects Sheriff Craven when he insists he is “cursed by God”. Bathed in the warmest most relaxing light of the episode F Murray Abraham's Dr. Winters reminds Sheriff Craven directly that “he's just not that important, that's ego”. This (ego, arrogance) becomes a repeated theme. Turman relays a horrid story and ugly sentiments in glorious lighting, the mortifying and the beautiful always hand in hand, toe to toe in a dance. Murray's reaction is swift, Abraham says the words “thats ego” with a genial plainness tat belies his intention even before he continues with the rest, still, Glynn Turman is taken aback. Abraham says; “Who are you to claim special qualities of sin from the rest of us?” (Pouring himself a drink he had earlier scolded his friend about) “If you're cursed we're all cursed (beat) and I meant that in the nicest possible way”. As he says the last line Abraham gives Turman a cheery salutation with his drink. Turman holds a stern face a couple seconds, (his eyes already betraying the fact that he knows he has heard the truth ) but cracks before he can even give it any legitimacy and the laughter tumbles out of him already half into it's summersault. Its the kind of everyday poetry that escapes most storytellers, the kind that needs two actors with their skill and their sense of the grandiose and the simple to make it work. The details of what marks true friendship are often portrayed in wonderfully grand gestures to make them feel more powerful and robust to the audience, so that they resonate. Slow motion, a freeze frame of the moment, and close ups are all consistently used as signifiers of the moment. But Prior and Goyer trust the elegance of the moment (the ability to talk in this sort of straightforward fashion is a marker of deep friendship) and the grace of their actors to illuminate the poetry without pomp and it works

There is something to be said for the almost magical air of complex simplicity both Abraham and Turman bring to their characters. In both F Murray Abraham's Dr Winters and Glynn Turman's Sheriff Craven we find two actors who can cut through the fog of what classism has told us about the middle class, age, power, or nobility. A small town sherriff using words like “Maudlin” and “Posse Comitatus” doesn't feel right to common conceptions around the type of person holding these jobs. You need an actor like Turman who can bring a sense of grandeur to a school teacher who dies feeding a gremlin a candy bar to be able to pull off giving the common man an authentic sense of gravitas. Old men arent commonly heroes either. You need someone who inspires cunning and brilliance with an air of vulnerability like the man who once played to the hilt an insecure but talented hater in Amadeus in order to achieve a properly smooth subversion of the tropes and make a withered cancer ridden old man feel righteous as exactly the adversary this particular evil needed to he extinguished. There are all these tiny gears at play in their faces, hands, and bodies connecting you to both their seriousness and their playfulness. They're down home sensibilities, and manners, and their immense intelligence, and how that ultimately bonds them. A hand gesture, the jutting out of a lip, a lazy but deep sigh that lives only in expression. Each “tells” on just how important life is to them, how how precious their friendship is, and subsequently how precious humanity is to them. When Abraham shows concern for his friend he grips his cup tighter. Turman’s response to Abraham asking “if the situation is as bad as that” (in reference to his pouring a drink) is a sophisticated facial expression that more than anything undergirds the level of communication they’re on where most things don’t need be said. While Craven and Winters regard each other with deep affinity and professional courtesy, they care about people in general despite being in two professions not known for this type of care. In movies/TV and I would guess sometimes in real life the common refrain for people in these career fields (Coroner/Police) are things like “remain detached" “don't get too close to the case” “Don't get too close to the victim" “Don't make this personal”. The autopsy goes opposite not only in taking it and making the personal important, but making it central to what gives them an edge. Cravens speech about his own “uselessness” is a dead give away to just how much he wants to be of use, of service. Their powers are not only in the cliché powers of deduction but in attachment and explicit constant empathy. Sheriff Craven's complete bafflement at the heartless nature of the murders, comes not just from a clinical more sterile want of understanding what the hell is going on, or the obsessive desire to get his man, but from a deep respect for the sanctity of life, shown in how this thing tears at him. Every time someone disappears or is found dead Sheriff Craven reacts freshly as if it were brand new. Dr. Winters feels it too, even though his job requires a less emotional connection, there is still a very philosophical and poetic respect for life. He politely asks each body for forgiveness as he opens them up, a detail that shows and tells on the level of empathy the character has for humankind far better then any speech could. Abraham’s provides a majestic refined touch to the expression of these small pleas which directly addresses the discourse we have around how victims are treated in true crime as after thoughts. Here are two men deeply wounded by and not merely angry or enraged by the loss of life. That same empathy, combined with the fortitude of his friendship with Craven, supersedes the murders, the stomach cancer, and their egos. Dr. Winters who upon revealing the nature of his affliction and it's impending doom remarks “We're all headed to the same destination” maybe reserved and capitulating about his own death, but about his friends life or the treatment of others as insignificant, he is not for play. When the story finally arrives where it arrives it is that friendship with Craven, that kinship with humanity that motivates him to sacrifice the unthinkable, to keep going even as each pain is more excruciating than the last. Abraham's cavalier response to his impending doom - not just with the cancer - but in the face of the monster, as compared to his response once the monster tells him of its plans for his friend is discernably different. From that point on his resolve becomes more ..well resolute. This is so explicitly relayed and so beautifully understated it dulls even the sharpness of some gnarly mutilation and the tragedy of Winters sacrifice somehow ends up feeling…good.

The notions that those who hold power or authority or who are chosen by some version of divine right, blood, entity, or position in a hegemonic system, are the ones who need to save us is far too common of a narrative that doesn't really empower us. The power of “The Autopsy is then two fold; A. It lends power to the idea that heroism is in the hands of the common man as well. That we can all fight and win and scrap and thrive, even while being honest about the cost. B. It brings catharsis with that win. By the end of the episode, just when it seems death and gloom have won over we find our Daniel Webster has outsmarted the Devil and in that has won the day or at least a reprieve for humanity as represented in their friendship, a friendship illustrated by way of nuance and fine stitching. Craven’s power was in his reaction to being powerless, which shows his character. He willingly accepts help, growls, hurts, drinks, but he doesn't punish anyone else for his shortcomings. He doesn’t start lashing out on the town, throwing power around and arresting errant “punks". He mourns these losses and resigns himself to the idea that he may be up against something bigger than him while (without actually making a decision to do so explicitly) continuing to work the case. Winters sees this and offers his own life (which is a death sentence and a divine sacrifice) to stop this monsters task, but again mostly to save his friend who to him represents everything right with humanity. That's cathartic. In film and television catharsis, a release of tensions arriving from emotions held in suspension for any elongated amount of time can be powerful, maybe one of cinema’s most potent weapons as well, but its power is in having had tension in the first place, holding it for as long as possible for the third of your story. Too many times catharsis arrives with little stress. The characters don't feel genuinely threatened, the stakes don't feel genuinely impressed upon, death is never really on the table until the very very end, and no one is ever really truly dead until their contract is up and then there's just a new “Dread Pirate Roberts”. So Catharsis may come but it comes in a form that is dimmed. Something akin to a candle in the sun. When it's done right though, when the stakes are clear, concise, and impactful. When the tension has a vice grip on the audiences imagination, when death is absolute and then suddenly, out of the darkness, you show a hand reaching in to pull us up out of the abyss, well then that story, that catharsis it sticks, and that release is never really forgotten. To make the gist of that impact the sword of that death blow friendship? That may not be new, but it is refreshing and more to the point it’s not far from the truth. To have two actors with as much poise, elegance, passion, intelligence and charisma lends it even further weight. There is a desire that you have right from the gate because these are two actors you want to see win, then through the skills they embody the characters with it extends to the characters they create. Their on screen chemistry injects a richness to the authenticity of the love between these two that friends that says it more profoundly than had the words been actually uttered. The philosopher Epicurus said of friendship; '“The same conviction which inspires confidence that nothing we have to fear is eternal or even of long duration also enables us to see that even in our limited conditions of life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship”. “Nothing enhances our security so much as friendship” is a proper ending to a show where the darkness in every single way imaginable seems poised to win. It places the episode firmly in the same sphere that made “Seven” so appealing to me, which is that it isn't an argument for all of humanity as beautiful and worth saving in and of itself, it's an argument that those places where humanity as one of nature's best ongoing experiments does work, works so profoundly, so beautifully that it makes all the rest worth saving. And in these dark days a much needed balm if nothing else.