I finished watching the Paramount+ series, 1883, last night. It didn't bring me to tears, but a deep sense of life, liberty, and the acceptance of bad things happening to good people.
It's the story of a just-entering-adulthood young woman and a group of people heading to Oregon in a wagon train. The series had me interested when I saw Sam Elliot was in the cast, but it set the hook with the opening scene's narration, spoken in a soft Tennesee drawl:
I remember the first time I saw it. Tried to find words to describe it... but I couldn't. Nothing had prepared me... no books, no teachers, not even my parents. I heard a thousand stories but none could describe this place. It must be witnessed to be understood. And yet... I've seen it, and understand it even less than before I first cast eyes on this place. Some call it the American Desert, others, the Great Plains. But those phrases were invented by professors at universities surrounded by the illusion of order and the fantasy of right and wrong. To know it, you must walk it. Bleed into its dirt. Drown in its rivers. Then its name becomes clear. It is hell, and there are demons everywhere.
Don't want to spoil anything by saying more, but if you can put up with some harsh-but-not-overwhelming language, I recommend 1883 with as many thumbs up as I can round up.
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