There is a tendency, an understandable one it should be added, to view insurgencies against tyranny and authoritarianism as wholly noble and heroic.
That they are noble and heroic goes without saying – you cannot take on a fight of such gargantuan, near impossible-to-win proportions and not possess impressive quantities of both qualities.
But to leave it at that is to ignore how real and dark the struggle for freedom is, how even at their most ardent, there will be many days when everyone in that insurgency wonders if they can last the distance, if they are making any difference and if their envisaged outcome, complete and utter liberation from tyrannical rule, is ever going to come to fruitition.
Truthful depictions of these marathon struggles always encompass the raw humanity of the situation which makes Star Wars: Andor, six episodes into its slow burn but gripping telling of the slow but steady rise of rebellion to the hateful fascist Empire, one of the most searingly honest tales of insurgency to date, not simply in a franchise which is built around the burning idea of opposing tyranny with life, limb and soul, but in televisual-cinematic storytelling generally.
While episodes 1 to 3 of Andor, released in one canny batch by Disney+ right at the start of the season – unlike Netflix and in common with almost all its other rivals, the streamer releases episodes in buzz-sustaining, retro-influenced episode a week – took their time taking us into the world of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) who — SPOILER ALERT!!! — comes to a heroically untimely end in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, episodes four through six put the pedal to the metal with ever-increasing vigour until we reach the point in the final one of the episodes under review where the rebellion strikes a telling blow against its hated enemy.
Granted, while the attack makes the news on all the Empire’s media apparatus – this doesn’t necessarily ring true since fascist regimes are secretive by nature and predisposed to keep their failures under wraps and their victories gloriously unfurled for all to see; still, it serves the narrative purpose of putting the cat among the Sith pigeons – it’s hardly going to cripple the Empire’s cruelly amoral juggernaut.
Still, it’s an important major step, quite apart from the practical purpose of giving the Rebellion funds to fight another day – the story centres around a heist to steal the payroll of an Empire military outpost on the occupied planet of Adhlani – because it shows the Empire is not omnipotent, that it can be beaten and that its arrogance, as is sagely observed at one point early in the show, will be its undoing because it simply cannot conceive that anyone could best it.
Masterminded by Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), Andor’s recruiter who poses as an antiques dealer on the galactic capital of Coruscant who works closely with Rebellion co-founder Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), the heist is intended not to bring down the Empire since one small act, no matter how much it reverberates around the galaxy, cannot hope to achieve that.
No, it is intended as a symbolic show of force and intent, the beginning of the end of a regime which on Aldhani at least has imprisoned the local population, clearing out the Highlands population very much as the British did in Scotland, and decimating the culture to the point where only a small number of adherents, the true believers, continues to practise ancient rites and practices.
Star Wars has always had a keenly critical narrative eye for the way in which fascism destroys far more than its builds up in search of some misguided ideal of perfection, and in quietly blistering fashion, it excoriates the Empire using Aldhani as exhibit A of how colonialism is a destructive force that must be opposed at every turn.
In keeping with the franchise’s approach to date, this messaging is not delivered in a polemic, tub-thumping fashion but with a series of acute observations as the small Rebel group into which Andor is parachuted, much to their unhappiness, and to be honest his too since he is, at he admits, not a team player, tell of the way in which the Empire has used a planet simply for its strategic position for its nefarious purposes.
Led by Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay), the group is a mixed bag of those fully committed to the cause in body and mind such as Karis Nemik (Alex Lawther) who brings idealistic naive earnestness to proceedings that contrasts with the more utilitarian outlook of people like Arvel Skeen (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and even Andor himself, though for all his detachedness is actually more of a passionate believer in the Rebellion that he will let himself admit.
He admits to the group, under pressure from Skeen that he is a mercenary but essentially tells them that doesn’t undermine his usefulness to him or the cause and that they will need to learn to sully their ideals, at least a little, in order to beat the Empire.
While that may be the case, people like Vel are determined that they will walk a wholly different path to their oppressors, assuring the Commandant of the Imperial garrison, Jayhold Beehaz (Stanley Townsend), who has been taken hostage along with his family during the operation which is using a major celestial event on the planet as cover, that contrary to what they expect, that the Rebels will let the Empire hostages go free when the job is done.
She archly points out that she knows the Empire would never be this generous, and it’s this scene that defines the Rebels as people who will do what it necessary but no more, to get their goals met; that, of course, is still tinged with a great deal of idealism, their tenuous hold of the high ground only one pragmatic person away from tumbling into the humanitarian abyss.
Andor is quite possibly one of the best Star Wars tales to come along in some time because like Rogue One before it, it doesn’t sugarcoat the battle between good and evil, all too aware that grey is a colour that fits both sides better than either would like to admit, and also because it takes us behind the scenes of not just the Rebellion but of the Empire itself with the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB), and in particular, ambitious lieutenant Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), shown in all their self-serving “glory”.
It’s illuminating because we see what drives each group, and how at their heart are people of all kinds trying to make their way in a galaxy that abhors failure, as disgraced security agent Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) learns as he returns home to belligerent emasculation by his hard-edged mother (Kathryn Hunter), some of whom are committed to self-sacrificially making things better while a great many others, too many in fact, are happy to collaborate if it gets them somewhere better than they currently are.
At the heart of Andor is gritty, honest, sometimes damning humanity, and while there is nobleness and heroism, there’s also a great deal of hard graft, struggle and pain and we’re all the richer for Star Wars embracing it because it gives its already inspiring storytelling more emotional heft which makes its stories, and Andor is one of the best yet, all the more compelling and worth watching, especially with six episodes still in the offing in the current season.