Can a ‘true crime’ become a series? And most importantly, does it make sense? Apparently yes. Antonio Campos and Maggie Cohn have demonstrated it and the most fascinating thing of all is that the move turned out perfectly. It should be noted that the starting point of the story was attractive enough for the project to be carried out successfully, but, even so, fiction had a difficult time: at the end of the day it competed with the real images of such a case. media as interesting. Because ‘The Staircase’ addresses the strange case in which Michael Peterson, a popular American writer and columnist, was involved, who was accused of killing his wife on one of the stairs of the enormous mansion in which they lived.
The event was not only the talk of Durham, the city in which Peterson had made a name for himself by writing acidic columns for the local newspaper ‘Herald Sun’, denouncing the corruption that existed in the city and especially in the Police Department – it came to launch his candidacy for mayor in 1999 – but became a documentary series in the hands of the Frenchman Jean-Xavier de Lestrade who, with Peterson’s permission, introduced a camera throughout the process to record how the columnist prepared his defense and documenting the trial and family life of the Petersons. The result was ‘The Staircase’ -yes, the fiction has not even changed its title-, a ‘true crime’ structured in thirteen chapters that came to light in 2004 and that Netflix, in the heat of the new series that has just arrived to HBO Max, has now taken care of highlighting it on its cover.
If in the documentary some aerial images of the mansion and the voice-over of the news bulletins of the time giving the news opened the piece, in the fiction it is a black screen and the call that Peterson made that fateful December 9, 2001 to emergency services. At around 2:40 a.m., noticeably upset, the columnist called for an ambulance after finding his second wife, Kathleen, unconscious and lying on the first three or four steps of one of the stairs of the house and in the middle of a good trail of blood She said she was still breathing. A few minutes later she called again demanding urgency, since she had stopped breathing and seemed to be dead.
The first aerial images show the Police cars approaching the scene, but the camera stops on another vehicle, the one taking Todd, one of Peterson’s sons, back home, after enjoying a pre-Christmas evening with friends. The point of view changes to the interior of the transport, while the lights of the police vehicles wake up an almost sleepy Todd. It is a magnificent sequence shot, with which the director shows viewers the chaos and confusion that reigns in a house already cordoned off by the police, with Kathleen’s body still on the stairs, rigid, and Peterson sitting in the kitchen, in shock, until he finally understands what has happened and throws himself into his wife’s arms, crying inconsolably.
The shame of the French
Countless articles have already been written about how lame the Spanish version of HBO Max is. At the beginning of this year, director Rodrigo Cortés requested the platform subtitle his film ‘Red Lights’. He wasn’t the first to complain. Many users are dissatisfied with the lack of subtitles and dubbing in Spanish in many of the titles on the platform, even in new content. And it has happened with ‘The Staircase’. The series is written in two languages: English and French. Well, as of today, and there are already six chapters, none of the French fragments are subtitled in Spanish or dubbed and, if you want to see them, you better understand French or understand the English subtitles. It is a shame.
Colin Firth is simply enormous and it was not easy to find the tone of such a peculiar guy, a narcissistic trickster, without falling into imitation and ridicule. Toni Collette, as Kathleen, is also brilliant, giving life to this successful executive, who clings to alcohol to cope with an existence that is less idyllic than she seems. When the police declare the house the scene of a crime, a nightmare begins for Peterson and the family, who will not always be on the writer’s side. As the process progresses, stories and secrets that the couple kept safe are revealed and that provide delicious twists in the plot.
Metalanguage
Fiction and the documentary series thus establish a kind of dialogue, almost pointing to metalanguage. This is especially visible when the superb photography of HBO Max’s work changes to the 4:3 format to represent the material that the Police recorded and also that of Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s documentary or when the importance of the documentary in the journey that the case takes. The good thing about the series is that it merges and separates itself from the documentary at the convenience of the authors. And in this sense, it can contribute things that eluded the French director’s chapters, such as the sequence that shows a fun family dinner to celebrate that Martha is going to start university, or when he plays with points of view, staging how the Prosecutor’s Office believes the homicide was and how the defense claims the incident occurred. It doesn’t cut it when it comes to images, by the way, and some can offend the most sensitive people. Disturbing and even terrifying is the trail of blood on the stairs, which will remain visible in the house throughout the process.
The reader will see that I have tried to avoid giving much more information about the case because it deserves to be surprised at every twist and turn of events. Just a piece of advice: if you haven’t seen either the documentary or the series, opt for one first, whatever it is, and then, when you finish it, go straight to the other. You’ll see that both are fantastic.
‘The Staircase’, the series, is currently streaming on HBO Max; ‘The Staircase’, the documentary series, is available on Netflix.
#Staircase #HBO #Max #bring #true #crime #fiction #truth