How to watch 'Sense8'

When departing from convention in storytelling, there are still a lot of requirements for making something truly oppositional to the status quo. Along with recognisably new if not unique characters and story, a changed structure unblemished by the ideological complicity of existing works that support harmful, dominant attitudes is needed. It’s always been my understanding that sci-fi is the genre most suited to go beyond those rigid boundaries of acceptability our earthly culture institutes, having no necessary allegiance to the world as it is but rather the world as it should be. 

Recent offerings, however, have left me feeling trapped in a mechanically lazy doubling down of cynicism and pretentiousness that offer condescension rather than hope.  In Man of Steel, a bleak tone and style are used too legitimise a non-sensical dilution of the purest embodiment of heroism.  Even the TV revolution of the last decade has brought only the repetitious Heroes that failed under the weight of its own visibility or the misleading Lost that hid it’s poor plotting and irresolution behind it’s dynamic characters and manipulative score.  

Thankfully and in true sci-fi fashion, developments in our viewing technology and industry have landed us the Netflix Original Series Sense8, one of the most genuine attempts at starkly oppositional sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time. Transmuting Heroes’ disinterest towards innovation into a disregard for basic dramatic principles and transferring Lost’s sympathetic confusion between audience and viewer, Sense8 summons an engrossing, wild eyed storm of sensation that makes the experience of watching the series its central, gripping conceit. 

Resulting in something of a blend between the vulgar angst of Misfits and the brain breaking incongruity of From Dusk till Dawn, the real challenge of watching Sense8 is deciding how far it is artful in its lack of convention rather than being completely without craft. Where any viewer falls in this divide will come from their reaction to the series’ premise, pace, characterisation, tone and editing scheme. To help the adjustment process, I’m going to share the mental compromises and distortions I’ve made in my desperate attempts to identify and accept Sense8’s approach to revealing a unifying, optimistic and inclusive human experience.

The agonising suicide of Angelica in a burned out church disturbs the lives of 8 people across the globe. Rebellious but compassionate Chicago cop Will Gorsky experiences vivid dreams of powerlessly watching as a strange, tortured woman shoots herself in front of him. In San Fransisco, transgender hacktivist Nomi Marks sees Angelica in a Pride stage show, eventually collapsing from the shock as the hallucinations become more and more vivid. In Mexico City, secretive action movie star Lito Rodriguez begins spouting lines that aren’t in the script and seem to belong to someone else. Isolated London based DJ Riley Blue is mentally transported across continents during a drug trip that goes from euphoric to dangerous as soon as she returns to reality. Hedonistic Berlin safecracker Wolfgang Bogdano’s career defining heist is interrupted as he hears sirens from police cars thousands of miles away. Conflicted bride-to-be Kala Dandekar feels rain on her skin in place of the summer sunshine of Mumbai. In South Korea, violently frustrated businesswoman Sun Bak sees live chickens inexplicably appear and disappear from her desk. In Nairobi, good natured bus driver and Jeanne Claude Van Damme worshiper Capheus develops a fearlessness that opens up new career avenues, as morally questionable as they are well compensated. 

Despite their disparate lives, they are all no longer simply individuals; they are now part of the same Sensate Cluster. Along with the inconvenient mental and emotional side-effects of their attachment, the Sensates have the ability to psychically ‘visit’ one another while remaining invisible to those around them and ‘share’ their skills and knowledge when required. The difficulties and intimacies the group now have beyond their own struggles leave them under threat from a shadowy corporate entity.

What seems like a relatively simple premise is almost immediately hampered by the pace of Sense8 and it’s ambitious but frequently tangential cast of characters. Checking back and forth between characters as well as delving into both their dreams and childhood memories, any binge-watch potential is quickly depleted by the sheer mental exertion of keeping up with this baffling, at times boring, blend of stories. 

While it asks a lot of it’s audience, this is the first of many instances of Sense8 trying to have it both ways in its approach to spiritual subject matter. Without the heavy handed narration of Heroes reigning it in, Sense8 derives a halting but all consuming energy from its lurches between character’s stories. This allows for energised action sequences to be carried along by the Sensates ‘share’ power but also abruptly tense or dialogue based interludes as they ‘visit’ each other at particularly inconvenient or emotionally vulnerable downbeats. Corresponding with it’s premise, the pace of Sense8 incorporates the electrifying mood its ambition creates as well as acknowledging and co-opting its inherent dramatic failings into the lives of its distinctive characters.

 
Even so, the momentum derived from Sense8’s subject matter struggles to bond with the Sensates themselves. Once again stifled by the size of the cast, there is an alienating imbalance in the amount of time that can be spent with each of the Sensates to maintain the shifting pace. The dramatic consequences here take shape in a distance between viewer and Sensate, switching from one story to another for such long periods in a way that leaves them seeming dithering and weak willed. This is all the worse when these interludes come after a character is faced with a major decision. 

However, these slumps in characterisation too fit into the ebb and flow of the series premise as well as its global scope. Moving beyond the early cultural stereotypes of the Eastern nations, the time taken for the Sensate’s to reappear or make choices when off screen reflect an almost tidal meditation and emotional reality as they withdraw from the Cluster and return to their family, professional or hedonistic lives outside of their cross-continental connection. These languid retreats produce a real time, emotionally genuine and tidal interiority and consequence to whatever tragedy befalls them and each course of action they take. 

The audience is then rewarded for noticing the inner lives of the characters by the energy it produces, especially when we return to less frequently featured characters after they’ve just had sex or are winding down with some recreational drug use.The fluidity of the characters stories and interactions along with Sense8’s increasingly giddy approach to spiritual unity through introspection, sexuality and drugs that pervade the Sensate’s individual stories stops its stodgy, dragging weakness in a way that is not only refreshing but also disarmingly up-lifting.

Did somebody say trans-continental psychic sexy time?

Along with the heights of emotional intimacy it often reaches through it’s characters inner lives, the true frenzied nature of Sense8 comes full force with it’s tonal shifts between gritty spiritual drama and bawdy farce. The easy dictum of ‘visiting’ and ‘sharing’ is largely a carry over from the series’ equally out-there movie precursor Cloud Atlas and its accessible dictum of human destiny being shaped by both their ‘cruelty’ and their ‘kindness’. As the Sensate’s powers get progressively more conditional and complicated, though, just such an easy dictum of ‘visiting’ and ‘sharing’ loses its clarity and leaves us awash in the tempest of Sense8’s ambition without an anchor once the pace picks up.

High fantasy...

For those not already consumed by either its tides of energy or drowned by the dragging currents that its adjustments demand, the spiritual springboard of Sense8s premise is buoyed by gross-out humour. While these tonal changes push the mayhem of the series into an overdrive bordering on outright dysfunction, it sharpens the stories messy energy into a system of thinly contained bounces between a sucking mire of dangerous and isolated discontent to the freeing stratosphere of collective empathy. With it’s character’s interiority and each extreme of the outside world, the individual plot threads in Sense8 span a convincing, if chaotic, environment for it’s adventures.

...bowels of reality

Bringing it all home is the challenge Sense8 poses to it’s editor, tasked with marshalling this messy but exhilarating maelstrom of variable pace and tone in a way that is seamless and consistent. A major strength of Cloud Atlas was it’s ability to maintain the audience’s connection with it’s six stories taking place over six different time periods through riveting climaxes and consistent focus on characters that are variously reincarnated in each story. While this editing scheme helped elevate the effective if not incredibly deep message of individual and collective responsibility, Sense8’s long form narrative doesn’t allow for such rapid cutting as a result of it’s attempts to bring such an attitude to the multicultural present.

The editing staff of Sense8, in line with the deceptive prescience of it’s writing, bring out the truly gripping core of the series with their own subversions. Rather than editing around action sequences too chaotic and far between to be impactful or around more languid ‘visits’ which despite their spiritual clarity only occasionally shine with wisdom, the balance between stories instead focuses on involving the viewer in the very confusion the series’ distortions bring on. Noticeably jarring but nonetheless effective, our shifting between the Sensates struggles to reconcile their isolation, connection, sexuality, morality, responsibilities, loyalties, identities, memories and origins mirrors the experience of watching them do so. 

Hearts away from home

Assaulted on all sides by the slippery, sporadic sensory overload of Sense8, reconciling with Sensates who have withdrawn from proceedings in whatever state of distress or undress they appear in as well as noticing consistent motifs across stories at last becomes welcoming rather than rejecting. The forceful suggestion that these 8 people are related beyond simple narrative convenience then pulls their disparate realities of disgust and serenity together. Having adjusted our brains to accept identification with these characters, so too can we learn lessons of loyalty and co-operation across the globe thanks to the unifying human spirit unearthed in this optimistic and wonderfully diverse series.