The Madison: In the Heart of Grief According to Taylor Sheridan

Preston and Stacy Clyburn have been married for almost forty years and are still deeply in love. Preston is a businessman who built his fortune in New York, a metropolis whose frenzy is starting to bother him. So, periodically, he travels to a farm in rural Montana to spend time with his brother Paul. There, the two spend their time fishing, until a tragic event changes everything.

In The Madison, the siblings are aboard a small twin-engine plane that crashes, and both lose their lives instantly. Stacy and her daughters are called to take the first flight from the Big Apple to identify the remains of the deceased, with the widow feeling increasingly drawn to that home that was her late husband's last roof. To the point of considering abandoning life in the big city to start over in that remote and isolated place, in perfect communion with wild nature.

The Time for Healing

With The Madison, Taylor Sheridan crafts a project with a strong melodramatic bent, different from anything he has done before. Unlike any other series he has produced or created, here the focus is on processing grief and the void that the protagonists find themselves facing, using the neo-western setting solely to trigger a story of unspoken words and emotional reckonings.

A project designed for two seasons, both already filmed back-to-back, with the second expected by the end of the year, while the first landed a few days ago in the Paramount+ catalog. The main reason it's worth diving into this tear-jerking story is undoubtedly Michelle Pfeiffer's poignant performance, which constantly steals the scene from the varied and large cast, displaying a timeless charm that allows her to carry the weight of the entire narrative.

A narrative that, however engaging, especially in the first episodes, gradually settles into more or less overused solutions, further unraveling when the numerous flashbacks featuring Kurt Russell as the late spouse decrease in number, allowing the various problems of daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren to emerge, delivering not always credible solutions.

Clash of Antipodes

The series insists forcefully on a paradoxically caricatured representation of urban life, a place incapable of offering the protagonist the right serenity. A clear decision that is emphasized from the outset, but which ends up making the idea of "detaching" excessively forced, an idea instead represented by that rural essence and existence that increasingly takes hold, amidst developing romantic subplots and rather implausible plot twists.

Certainly, Christina Alexandra Voros's direction, behind the camera for the entire season, finds greater scope in the dimension of these immense valleys, boundless landscapes where finding peace seems indeed plausible. If New York appears as a nightmare of concrete and noise, Montana becomes a living space, where the river's waters can welcome shed tears and open the doors to a new tomorrow.

The screenplay, however, suffers from a notable disparity in tones and atmospheres, with the sensitivity with which the details of loss, of that unfillable void, are outlined, living through powerful key scenes, and a more boisterous and predictable soul. The management of relationships between the numerous supporting figures, whether main or secondary, reveals evident contrivances. And while some passages are deeply touching, others risk descending into unintentional farce.