"It's really lucky when you have a set-up when so many things are unsaid between characters. As long as you trust the energy of the other person, it's all going to translate." - Sarah Clarke
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CHRISTINE: The 14th Amendment guarantees equal rights to all persons. - "Commander in Chief"
Press
"Nina lives" Salon.com (5/23/2002)
The last episode of "24" was made for Nina-ites,
and for ecstatic, fulfilling perfidy.
by David Thomson
For those of us who had been wondering about Nina (and everyone
else in sight), the last episode of "24" was a triumph
for the most daring work in film offered to America in a while.
More than that, Episode 24 topped even the electrifyingly brief
admission at the close of 23 that Nina was the mole, and not just
Jack Bauer's ex-lover but someone ready to kill him.
If you haven't been watching "24," you're lost already;
but no one devoted to the show is having the suspense spoiled by
what I'm saying. If you have been with "24," you were
there Tuesday night. In our house, at the end of Episode 23 with
just a glimpse of Nina's weary but still beautiful face on the
cellphone (her only true love), speaking in some dangerously
foreign language, there were cries of "Nina! Nina!" --
as if to say, You wicked bitch, Nina, expect to die in disgrace
-- but also salutations: Nina! You did it! You are the one!
In other words, for Nina-ites, the discovery of ultimate perfidy
and treachery was ecstatic and fulfilling. For this wraith of
electronic intelligence, burnout and Prada clothes was and is one
of the great femmes fatales. The actress is Sarah Clarke, and she
has been vital to this thrilling show.
Thus, in the very last episode, while Jack was valiant, forceful
and resolute (and there was a great moment where he nearly breaks
down on hearing the false news -- who tells him? -- that his
daughter is dead), it was Nina who was the motor of the episode.
Her slightly listless air fell away, her face hardened, she
fought off the last fatigue, her eyes took on a killer focus, and
she moved. She was slithering this way and that, whipping along
corridors (on her cellphone always) to avoid detection, going
from one language to another and serenely popping anyone in her
way. Even, yes, her old rival -- I'll say no more, but in
"24" there were sides and sides, and Nina was on the
losing side in so many ways. But not a sweet, placid loser. And
Nina lives.
In backtracking to prove her guilt, Jack thinks of the video
coverage in the room where another female operative supposedly
killed herself (hours and weeks ago). And there it was after
electronic recovery: a fixed surveillance top-shot, yet as
beautiful as one from Fritz Lang, of Nina coming into the room,
swathing the woman in death, and then gazing up at the camera as
baleful as the serpent caught in its first great sin -- the shot
of the season and one of the most piercing moments in American
film. (When have you last seen or felt "movie" being
used so brilliantly in a so-called major motion picture?)
There are other things to be said about the last episode that
address the series as a whole: The scripting was both intricate
and expansive; the camera-editing style was increasingly attuned
to nerve endings and paranoid apprehension. I've mentioned
already the way in which Nina became a fleeing object but never
more dangerous. On the other hand, the culmination of the
narrative was such that we saw two men (Jack Bauer and David
Palmer) in situations where they were both likely to lose their
wives. Throughout the dense interstitching, therefore, has been a
grand design about the ambiguities of duty and family.
I doubt this is over yet. There will be another "24"
series next year, and I believe it will have one central, serial
story, with Bauer and Palmer as leading figures. Who else? Well,
Jack has his daughter still, of course. And he might have Nina.
There was blood on her brow, and rue in her eyes. But there was a
voice saying she had to be kept alive. "We need her,
Jack," said his boss. He and the rest of us. And while Nina
lives, the world (I'm happy to say) is unsafe.
