We all desire a life that is justifiable to our consciousness without a care about anyone else’s opinion. If someone questions our rationale, it is on us to decide if we let that affect us. But the real world, built of social, legal, and moral frameworks, may demand a clear explanation of our lives, which ends in exploring the complex human psychology. Muted, the recent Spanish series on Netflix, is an exciting experiment exploring those complexities. However, the series, which is built as a psychological thriller, fails to achieve its full potential to incite chills at the right moments.
Creator: Aitor Gabilondo
Starring: Arón Piper, Almudena Amor, Cristina Kovani, Manu Ríos, Aitor Luna,Ramiro Blas
Streamer: Netflix
Sergio (Arón Piper) is released from detention six years after committing parricide. In order to discern whether he is amicable to society, psychiatrist Ana Dussuel (Almudena Amor) takes up an assignment in collaboration with the state to secretly watch him. The first episode opens with a quiet environment only to relentlessly turn into gory chaos. Take, for instance, the scene where goldfishes swimming in their glass bowl, slowly swim up the surface to taste the blood that drips from Sergio’s hands. Such scenes foreshadow the chaos that is in the waiting. The plot asserts its identity and hints at the thriller prospect in the opening act itself, but as moves forward, it grapples with sustaining those early chills. However, each episode promises intriguing cliffhangers that segue into the next. Still, the overwhelming sense of vacuousness bookended by intriguing plot points robs us of the thrills, and we are not really bothered about knowing “what happened” or “why these things are happening this way” till the final moments of the series, which is definitely a redeeming factor.
In many ways, Muted can be termed as a perfect companion to Mammootty’s Munnariyippu (2014), which galvanically depicted a lingering take on obsession. However, the series doesn’t get the atmosphere right, which, in turn, disengages us from the conflict. We see several characters strewn here and there, living separate lives. There’s a cop, an evangelical tutor, and many other officials associated with Ana’s assignment. But what are they contributing to the plot? Wouldn’t it be the same if some of these characters were never written in the first place? Muted needed a steady progression of events instead of impassive turns and intrusive twists. The flaws in the writing come to the fore when we see how the makers don’t really have a grip on the narrative.
While a lot might be seemingly wrong with Muted, the depiction of the dizzying crescendos and profound depths of the human psyche is on point. In a scene, we see Ana preferring duty over empathy while Sergio gets assaulted by a group of men. In another, we see her submit to her carnal desires when she sees him having sex. Through the representation of Ana’s psyche, we see an unflinching obsession entangled with love, lust, and childhood trauma. Also, we can draw parallels to Jodie Corner’s obsessive assassin in the BBC series Killing Eve with Muted‘s Ana.
Among the narratives populated with police procedural plots, Muted showcases a new arena of a psychological procedural tale. While we can’t fault Muted for not trying, it definitely doesn’t try enough to deliver a compelling thriller.
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