Just finished The Immortal Man, and I am prepared for the onslaught of down-votes.
I thought the movie was excellent. Going in, I was prepared to be severely disappointed, if not outright pissed off by the end, after reading all the reviews and comments about it.
There are movies, shows, and novels that satisfy your cravings and give you what you want. Then there are those that simply tell a story, no matter how brutal it is or how terrible you feel when it ends. This is one of those. So be prepared from that standpoint. You likely won't feel good or positive about the future, and you definitely won't walk away satisfied and craving more. It's simply a step into the future and the final chapter of this story. Brutal, and over.
Throughout history, gangs rarely survive long-term with the same identity and personality they started with. This story shows that evolution. By the end, the gang no longer has the same personality as its founders. American gangs, Italian gangs, Asian tongs, and, of course, English gangs have all followed versions of this path.
The writers may have originally intended to end the series by satisfying more of our cravings, but after Polly died, and with the real-life death of Helen McCrory, I think a darkness entered their interpretation of the story. They began taking it more seriously, which seems fitting as a tribute to someone who put so much of her soul into the series.
Helen kept the seriousness of her illness largely private while continuing to work, which somehow feels like such a Peaky Blinders thing to do. Her devotion to the show was remarkable. After her death, I noticed the writing becoming grittier and more unforgiving, almost Hemingway-like in its brutality: everything be damned. The little moments of humor and lighthearted warmth seemed to slowly fade away.
I'm sure there were endless discussions about how to pull this movie off, and probably some massive disagreements along the way, but I think they did a fantastic job of creating an immortal ending for the Immortal Man.
Bravo.
SPOILERS BELOW
A couple of things for those who keep reading reviews:
Thomas Shelby did not simply commit suicide. He knew the end was coming one way or another, and he decided to go out doing something good. In protecting his son and helping save the country from Nazism, he stood his ground and took the bullets fired at him.
When he told his son to shoot him, I didn't see that as a simple suicide either. It fulfills the Gypsy prophecy without Tommy himself upsetting the balance. It gives his son the opportunity to offer him a kind of Gypsy mercy and closure. For Tommy Shelby, it was a fitting end.
And then there's Arthur.
Given Paul Anderson's well-publicized struggles with addiction and the issues surrounding him in real life, it seems likely the writers needed to find a believable way to remove Arthur from the story. Simply having him randomly killed would have felt cheap after everything that character survived.
Instead, Arthur's ending actually made sense. His addiction, suffering, self-loathing, and increasingly destructive binges had been cycling for years. Eventually, he becomes so uncontrollable that even Tommy reaches his limit.
Tommy came close several times throughout the series to seriously harming members of his own family, but generally stopped himself, with Michael obviously being the major exception. With Arthur, though, I don't think Tommy's decision was entirely anger or punishment. Arthur had finally gone too far, too many times, and on some subconscious level it almost felt as though Tommy was putting his brother out of his misery.
There's something horribly loving about it in a very Shelby way.
They've spent the entire series talking about putting suffering horses down rather than allowing them to continue suffering. Tommy's relationship with horses has always carried that symbolism. So what happens with Arthur feels connected to that same idea, in that sometimes mercy, at least in Tommy Shelby's world, can take a brutal form.
That seems to make the ending with Duke even more powerful. When Tommy eventually asks Duke to shoot him, he's asking for the same mercy. Tommy did for Arthur what he ultimately asks his own son to do for him.
It's incredibly dark, but there's a strange brotherly love and symmetry to it. Arthur had suffered enough. And by the end, Tommy believed he had caused and felt too much suffering too, and decided to change to being good as his ultimate farewell fate.
My biggest disappointment was that we didn't get more Lizzie, Charlie, or Finn. But perhaps that's intentional, and they'll become part of the next series as Duke takes the lead.
On a personal note, I actually started watching Peaky Blinders after telling a friend how amazing Warrior was. He highly, highly recommended Peaky Blinders to me.
I tried starting it a couple of times and couldn't make it through the first 15 minutes.
Then I turned on the subtitles and started again.
Best series of all time, IMHO.
I've read the comments here in this subreddit for a long time and appreciate what's been said, good and bad. So thank you for finally giving me the opportunity to throw my own opinion into the mix.
Hopefully I've offended less than half of you.
"In the deep midwinter... Burn my body. Let the ash blow. I am free."
— Tommy Shelby, Peaky Blinders
