I Am the Night (1.1) - A Slow Burn

The pilot of I Am the Night presented viewers with a slow burn of dichotomies from the themes down to the technical components of the episode. The detective period piece recounting the aftermath of the Black Dahlia murder is helmed by Patty Jenkins and reunites her with Wonder Woman lead actor, Chris Pine (Jay Singletary). Our main character, Fauna Hodel, is played by India Eisley (most well known for her work on The Secret Life of the American Teenager). The story is based on real events, such as many of the details of Fauna’s life. Jay Singletary, however, is a fictional addition to the world. In this first episode, he anchors the story living in LA, while Fauna anchors her part of the story in Nevada. The pilot also featured prominent roles for Golden Brooks (Jimmy Lee) and Jefferson Mays (George Hodel). The episode is directed by Patty Jenkins herself and written by Sam Sheridan.

The pilot – as most do – serves to introduce us to a handful of characters we will get to know as time trudges on. It does so in a meticulous manner. The pacing of the episode feels slow and yet much is revealed by the end. One of the first of many seeming contradictions about how the episode plays out. From the beginning of the episode, race is a central tenet of the show. Fauna (at the time, Pat) is a mixed-race child who cannot seem to totally fit it with her black peers and certainly not her white ones. However, Jenkin’s direction and Eisley’s portrayal (and to some effect, Sheridan’s writing) do not position Fauna as a one-dimensional punching bag for the world around her. There always seems to be something lurking beneath the surface and it is not until after her encounter with Jimmy Lee late at night that we start to uncover that. She sneaks into Jimmy Lee’s bedroom once she is passed out, searches for her birth certificate, and discovers a secret that seems to set the whole series in motion. Beyond the pacing of the episode and Fauna’s struggles with her own biracial background, Jenkins frequently creates dichotomies between the foreground and background of scenes. It often adds to the intensity of individual scenes. The first instance is when Fauna and Lewis (Dabier) get harassed by police officers. As one police officer is talking to Fauna in the foreground, the background reveals – in soft focus – Lewis being shoved by the other police officer. When Jay Singletary first breaks into the morgue, Jenkins plays with putting him both in the foreground and moving people he is trying to hide from in the background and vice versa. Each of these dichotomies create conflicts. The slow burn of the episode makes each individual detail that is revealed and even those not revealed but hinted at (like Jimmy Lee’s backstory) that much more agonizing. Fauna’s biracial background seemingly puts her between two worlds, never fully accepted in one and not acknowledged in the other. Jenkin’s direction ties a bow on those conflicts, sustaining them throughout the episode through the physical manifestation of tension between foreground and background. There are so many nuggets of solid writing and incredibly fun acting and directing in the episode too. (Though these exist almost entirely in the LA scenes as the pulp gets ramped up – the Nevada scenes struggle with clunky dialogue.) When Jay Singletary has to hide in the morgue so he climbs among bodies and the editing cuts between the police examining the body and Jay slowly losing his head after accidentally lighting his own cocaine on fire is admittedly a lot of dark fun. The first interaction Jay has with anyone face-to-face is in a bar where he challenges a young aspiring journalist who he thinks is doubting him uttering “I’m a loser…can you dig it?” in an utterly mocking tone (doubling as self-mocking given the fact at this point it wouldn’t be farfetched to describe him as a loser).

The little details that serve to bring scenes together in an effort to create environment as great. When Fauna confronts Jimmy Lee about the birth certificate, Jimmy Lee is smoking a cigarette. In fact, as the scene continues, Jimmy Lee demonstratively explains how she came to taking care of Fauna, all the while the cigarette is burning. As light creeps through the blinds, you watch the cigarette ashes fall as Jimmy Lee flails her arms. At the end of the scene as Fauna is left to contemplate everything, the cigarette is just smoldering in the ashtray. The same cinematographer that worked on Wonder Woman – Matthew Jensen – also reunites with Patty for this episode. The way he lights India Eisley throughout the episode (and really each actor and actress, but especially India) evokes the feelings of noir without sacrificing the softness of the camera’s gaze.

The episode ends with an introduction to the seemingly infamous George Hodel, Fauna’s grandfather. It is also at this time that it seems everyone’s story starts to intertwine. Just as we watch Jay Singletary move from a down-on-his-luck asshole to tragic suicidal man, an image for the whole show starts to come into sight. George Hodel’s debauchery pad is slowly revealed, Jimmy Lee phones Jay Singletary, and Fauna receives a warning about her grandfather over the phone from an anonymous face. All at once, the flame calms to allow you to digest all that the past hour on dropped on your head. Don’t blink though, because the flame burns anew in a week.