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User Reviews for: Patrick Melrose

salvdelg
7/10  6 years ago
It's really hard to feel empathy for Patrick in the first episode. Why would a rich man behave like that? What is he missing in his life? And how disrespectful is to kick on the floor his father's urn. The series at this point seems to be the story of fighting for self-control, regaining lucidity, getting rid of drugs: it seems like a spin off of Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. An unpredictable and incessant pursuit of pleasure just for the sake of pleasure.
But the following episodes, set in the past (but without interrupting the narrative), make the viewer's beliefs collapse and deliver the reality: it is a story of incestuous sexual abuse. Suddenly everything seems to make sense and Patrick is forgiven everything. From the lack of self-control he shifts to the most severe form of self-control, to the point of limiting himself and his family. Even his close friend ask Patrick if it was not the case to "make a change and finally bind with someone", as any viewer would ask him.
Perhaps from this point of view the detachment from reality is really exaggerated: at times it is not clear whether the rambling and "silly" behavior is due to the memories, or to his laziness of building human relationships. Empathy just leaves space for commiseration so many times.
But on the other hand the series transmits the powerful messages of the complexity of human relationships, of the possibility until the last moment to save oneself from his own bad thoughts, and that suffering does not know social class: you can try to commit suicide and use heroin even in a 5-star suite.
7/10
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