In The Loop

I was flipping through a folder of old Guild Wars 2 screenshots (I have nearly thirteen thousand of them now), looking for illustrations for yesterday's post on NPCs when I happened upon the picture above. Just for a second I was back in the Loop.

The tall-trunked pines, the blue and gold automaton, self-dismantling architecture streaming up into the sky. The resonance felt uncanny.

I've been watching Amazon's latest high-profile project, Tales from the Loop.  So far I've only seen two of the eight episodes, all of which were released simultaneously in early April.

It's been described variously as "Thoughtful television for the slow days of lockdown" (The Independent) "Artfully slow-moving sci-fi" (The Guardian) and "Another dystopian drama for your lockdown watch list" (NME). Digital Spy believes the show is "more than just Amazon's Stranger Things" despite both being set in the 1980s. Well, a 1980s, although after the two episodes I've watched I'm not sure how you'd know. It looks as much like the 1950s as the 1980s to me.

The two things everyone seems to agree on, whether they like the show or not, is that Tales from the Loop" is very beautiful and very, very slow. That's what drove Joel Gilby of The Guardian to distraction: "Loop is very beautiful, but that’s where the praise ends. Fundamentally, I consider it rude to take an hour of someone’s life and only tell seven to nine minutes of story across it", he says of the first episode, one of the most thought-provoking and emotionally disturbing hours of television I've watched in years. I guess you either get it or you very much don't.

The pace is astonishing. I can entirely understand how some viewers might - will - find it frustrating. Shots don't just linger, they glaciate. There's a scene in the second episode where you can literally watch paint dry. Almost everyone speaks slowly, often quietly, often with little inflection. Conversations barely start, rarely continue, often drift. Half of every episode seems to be people walking through woodland.

I find the whole thing mesmerizing. I absolutely love it. Time seems almost to stand still while I watch. If you think nothing's happening, you're wrong. Everything is happening. If I was going to say anything negative, which I'm not,  it would be that an hour isn't nearly long enough.

Unusually (uniquely?) the series is based not on a novel or a comic but on paintings by Swedish Artist Simon Stålenhag. The soundtrack is by Philip Glass. One of the eight episodes is directed by Jodie Foster. This is a project that takes itself seriously and with ideas on this scale it needs to.

I need to re-iterate that I've only seen two episodes so this is not a review. In gaming terms it's a first impressions piece. What I would say is that, contrary to the numerous claims I've read suggesting Tales from the Loop as warm, cosy, nostalgic comfort viewing for lock-ins, I found it disturbing, unsettling, unsafe. If I had to slot the series into a genre, based on what I've seen so far, that genre would be existential horror.

The themes of loss, dissociation and identity put me in mind not just of Philip K Dick but of Kafka. The setting, a small town deep in pinewoods, inevitably invites comparisons with Twin Peaks. There's more than a touch of Lovecraft lurking in those woods, too.

To put it mildly, this is not an easy watch. It's bleak, dark, almost nihilistic. It's compelling. I really hope the next six episodes live up to the promise of the two I've watched. It would be one hell of a standard to keep up.

I could go on at length but I'll wait until I've seen the rest.

I wish I could remember what that golem in GW2 was doing, too.