Someone once told me time is a flat circle

"Time, memory, truth" is the core concept of the third season of "True Detective", and it is also the most vague concept.

1. Time/Memories

It begins with the memory in the memory, and finally the memory in the memory.

When the heroine appeared in the first episode, she was reciting this poem:

The name of the story will be time.

But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

—Tell me a story by Robert Penn Warren

The name of the story is time.

In the third episode, the hero and heroine began to discuss the poem.

Why can't we say the name of the time?

The heroine said: Because we exist in time, and we blend with time (We're in time and of time). But when you give it a name, you separate yourself from this connection, and we cannot be separated from time.

The male protagonist said: I thought it was God's name that couldn't be said.

On the other hand, the whole play, time and memory, really dominated Wayne's later destiny.

The time of the whole drama is completely dependent on the memories of the male protagonist, and the story line is very chaotic.

But recollection is never a linear process, more often it is a slideshow of flashes, especially in the case of major or traumatic events.

And at the same time, who says time itself isn't chaotic? Just like the phrase "Time is a flat circle" that kept repeating in the first season, everyone went around in circles, and in the end they had to go to the beginning of the story to find the final answer.

2. Life/Nothing

The protagonist spent so long in his life to solve the mystery, is it really for social justice?

Don't be led astray by Rust Cohle's image in season 1, the true detectives in season 3 aren't really great crime solvers. After all, the title of the show is True Detective, not Super Detective.

The third season's Wayne was a taciturn activist who didn't have the lengthy philosophical monologues of Rust, but he also had a pessimistic attitude towards life.

In the first episode, Wayne tells Roland that he doesn't think people like him should marry and cause harm to others. He later got married, and the combination was interesting: Wayne was a Vietnam War veteran, and Amelia had participated in anti-war marches; Wayne was dyslexic, and Amelia was a writer who taught languages. He did not harm others, but more to make up for himself.

When he was young, he was never taken seriously because of his skin color. Being able to concentrate on a case is also his way of escaping repression and finding self-worth.

When I was old, my wife died, and I always lost my memory intermittently. The unsolved cases from decades ago could not be answered, and my life reached the peak of emptiness. Recalling the mistakes he had made made him feel guilty. He finally began to read the book written by his wife, forcibly recalling, he must find the truth this time.

It seems that as long as this is the case, the emptiness of life can be filled, and past mistakes can be made up.

So much so that, at the beginning of the whole play, we saw such a serious and helpless old man, half of the time lost in the memory, half of the time he was brave in reality. While using the recording to remind myself every day, I kept a gun by the bedside.

With an almost paranoid sense of duty, Wayne seeks out the truth of the case, because for him, this may be the only way to redeem himself.

Roland's work process was relatively smooth, but he was never emotionally satisfied. Whether it is gay or not, his emotions seem to have no outlet to express. Unlike Wayne who still has a marriage to ruin, Roland's anger is either lynched or killed in a bar after a fight.

In old age, living alone with a group of dogs, he finally truly escaped reality, and the same case brought him back to reality.

They succeeded and found the truth. So have they redeemed themselves, found the value of life, and filled the emptiness of life?

No, they felt a greater nothingness.

"What have we done in the past twenty-five years?"

The whole play takes Wayne disappearing in the Vietnam War jungle as the final scene, and strangers on the battlefield often appear in his fantasy scenes in the play. Even though he was given the skill of amnesia, he never walked out of the shadow of war, never out of his past life. Even if time finally gave him the truth, at the end of the story, he tried to go back to his memory to find something. Because truth is just truth, it cannot become meaning.

There are still some strange clues left unanswered in the show, such as those spooky dolls, like the yellow king in the first season, do they have any other deeper meaning? Is there another layer of hidden identity for female reporters?

Maybe there is. But if you look at it from a nihilistic point of view, there is no need to get to the bottom of it. Not everything that happens has consequences, not both things are connected, they just happen.

It may be because of this attitude that the first seven episodes let us see a turbulent sea, and the final truth is revealed, like a stone thrown into the sea, after a wave of waves, the sea is as usual.

Wayne's sudden memory loss when seeing Julie may be the best ending. But I always felt that something was missing, so the screenwriter thoughtfully arranged for my son to put away the note with the address...

In any case, after the story is finished, it is time for the protagonist to return to his own life.

But in the end, just as we were about to look into the future, we once again fell into deeper memories with this person who finally lost his memory.

3. Back to time

The last episode once again uses a poem to point the title:

What am I now this I was then

May memory restore again and again

The smallest color of the smallest day

Time is the school in which we learn

Time is the fire in which we burn

- Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day by Delmore Schwartz

Time teaches us everything, and eventually burns everything we have.