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Some of the embellishments and additions to the existing narrative are fun but marginal.
Others fundamentally alter our relationship to the show if we decide to accept them at face value.
That we donthaveto accept them is another thing that makes this project fascinating.
Going with Carmela or Paulie wouldve resulted in a subjective, first-person recounting of the past as well.
Can ghosts talk to each other?
What are his sources?
Here, my seven obsessions with the echoes between the series andThe Many Saints of Newark.
Do not read on unless youve seenTheMany Saintsand all ofThe Sopranos.
Thing is, though, the series never addressed whether Silvio wore a hairpiece.
I dont think we established it one way or the other, he said.
InSaints, though, a toupee is a toupee.
So does this mean Silvios hair is canonically a fugazi?
I kinda like that version better.
Or figuring that when youre dead, there are no more secrets.
Its suggested in the film that sometimes babies are born with knowledge from the other side.
That would explain why little Christopher cries when Uncle Tony is near.
What if Christophers death in 2006 is long-delayed karmic retribution against Dickie for his obscene crimes?
The final link in a chain of woe?
InThe Many Saints of Newark, Dickie drowns Giuseppina after she confesses to cuckolding him.
Its a symbolic matricide against a woman half the murderers age.
Dickies surrogate son, Tony, has Oedipal impulses too.
Where Dickie enacts his urges, Tony denies them.
Dr. Melfi tells Tony that his most powerful sexual attractions are to women who remind him of his mother.
Tony is disgusted by the insinuation, but his parade of girlfriends and crushes proves Melfi was right.
Tonys rage is triggered when Gloria uses his mothers catchphrase, Poor you!
Her expressions and intonations sometimes make it seem as if Livia is speaking through her.
The echoes dont end there.
Now look at the patterning of the violence in the Moltisanti-Soprano universe.
Dickie drowns Giuseppina in the ocean.
Tony Soprano, Dickies pet project, is a prodigious asphyxiator.
Tony kills his nemesis Ralphie by strangling him and then beating his head against the floor.
Maybe Dickie is the strangler inside Tony.
In a sense, Dickie already killed his own son by corrupting Tony.
Tonys asphyxiation of Christopher makes the metaphorical literal.
Not if you watched the show.The Sopranoswas quite comfortable intimating a world beyond the one we inhabit.
The identity of Dickies killer
Its Junior.
Both showdowns happen on public streets and involve shattered auto glass and a runaway car.
Later in the movie, a gunman hired by Junior kills Dickie.
As surely as the sun rises in the east, the crime will be blamed on Harold.
PostTheMany Saintsrewatches ofThe Sopranoswill make it seem as if Tony is even deeper in denial than we originally thought.
Yeah, sure, hes wondering when his daughter, Meadow, will get there.
But now its not just a location.
Its a significant location.
But this is a man who has panic attacks.
But thats going to be one of the outcomes.
And Im all for it.
Maybe he had a panic attack and blacked out.
He shoulda told somebody.
Two roads diverged and who knows?
The Holstens scenes inThe Many Saints of Newarkserve a similar function for Tonys character.
On a cold December day, two roads diverged.
That was the day that Tony lost his father and his mother.
The father was his surrogate dad, Dickie.
Livia was lost that day, in a sense, to her demons.
And it might have been calledThe Many Saints of Newark.
Or self-reflexive fanfiction invented by the original artists.
I also like the idea of a movie reaffirming that theSopranoscharacters are just that: characters.
Words on a page.
Chase & Co. could pull aMad Maxand do anotherSopranosstory with yet another cast and set it in the present.
Or they could set it in the 1940s and populate it with a whole new batch of characters.
Chase created a big world.
Theres room to dream.
