It’s 11 days until the much anticipated second season premiere of “True Detective” and there’s still much unknown about what awaits us on the other side of that hour so instead of idly speculating, let’s turn out attention back to the stellar first season with Tea and a Movie’s new video breaking down the visual references in the Cary Fukunaga-directed season.
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Subtitled “The Long Bright Dark" (borrowed from the title of the first episode) season one is filled with evocative and arresting imagery that came from the collaboration of Fukunaga and his cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, built on Nic Pizzolatto’s scripts. According to Tea and a Movie’s video, there are many shots that references films that deal with serial killers like David Fincher’s “Seven,” Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs,” and Channel 4’s “Red Riding” trilogy as well as other mystery-thrillers like “Gone Baby Gone.” Instead of being intentional references to the aforementioned films, it seems more likely that a good deal of those shots–detectives scrutinizing murder victims, combing through records in a vast library, evidence pinned to a board–are just inherent to the genre, though the nod to Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood” seems totally intentional and closer to Fukunaga’s heart than ripping off other police procedurals.
However, you can decide for yourself whether the references were intentional when you watch the video below. Season 2 of “True Detective” premiere on June 21st on HBO. Season 1 is available for sale now in multiple formats, as well as on HBO Go and HBO Now.