A honeymooning couple, a family with children and a grieving woman are on a boat nearing an island in Hawaii, where the luxurious hotel where they intend to spend the perfect vacation is located. From the coast the staff greets with a smile, and always smiling the manager warns the employees that these guests should be treated as spoiled children: they must be satisfied when possible, but above all they must always feel at the center of attention. As viewers already know, however, someone will be killed in that hotel within a week.
But it’s not an Agatha Christie mystery: The White Lotus (on Sky and NOW from August 30) is more like a cross between a satirical version of Love Boat and a play by Chekhov, in which the ruling class destroys everything it touches without the slightest realizing it, while wallowing in privilege completely absorbed by its own unhappiness (in one of the last episodes there is also a perfect example from the famous “Chekhov’s rifle” ). As much as the total crime helps to keep the interest high, the series would have worked well even without this frame: the feeling of heralded disaster comes above all from the enormous imbalance of power between the super-rich and everyone else, who inevitably end up crushed both when they seek confrontation and when they try to be co-opted into the paradise of opulence.
Loading…
The creator is Mike White, who made his mark with the splendid ten years ago Enlightened and now always returns to HBO as an absolute author, writing screenwriting and directing all six episodes. As in Enlightened, White’s satire on the one hand strikes the hypocrisies of the culture of social commitment made up of chatter only, on the other it does not rage against anyone, because each character is portrayed in his human frailty. The direction is certainly more ambitious: shot entirely on location in Hawaii, the series alternates swirling camera movements with ultra-wide-angle close-ups. Also noteworthy is the soundtrack, composed by Cristobal Tapia De Veer, former author of the music of the English Utopia.
The White Lotus
Mike White
Sky and NOW from August 30th