THE JINX: THE LIFE AND DEATHS OF ROBERT DURST
DIRECTOR ANDREW JARECKI
★★★★★
Anything labeled “based on true events” has allowed streaming platforms to pour the oil on the theme over and over and over, producing countless hours of chilling crime stories. A precedent similar to the sad caricature took place in the spring of this year, when Netflix miniseries Baby Reindeer/Baby Reindeer (2024), a work of fiction about stalkerism, also based on “true events”, hit the screens. Soon, the audience got carried away with guesses, accusations and the same stalkerism, looking for prototypes of the series, or real persons. It resulted in cyberbullying and confirmed that global audiences are shaped, motivated and engaged by the content they consume.
However, this and other recent examples of viewers dissecting what they saw in a movie or TV series offer a new phenomenon – psychologists call it the sofa detective (armchair detective) self-confidence, which perfectly characterizes our era. We’ve seen countless trials (and staged them), know how an autopsy and gathering of evidence goes. Based on it, a superhuman investigator awakens in us, who questions the competence of professionals, because “but we know how the investigation proceeds”. In this context, the documentary series is quite unique The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015-2024), which has been in the works for more than ten years, but its sequel, or the second season, has recently hit the screens.
First of all it must be said that A curse, created by director Andrew Jarecki and his team, is like the best of the Coen brothers’ films – in which the absurd crime sequences surpass the brightest moments of our imagination. From scene to scene it is necessary to call out: well, it can’t be! But is. An unusual protagonist, Robert Durst, who comes from the wealthy circles of a Manhattan real estate dynasty, eccentric friends, false identities, a missing wife, two more deaths – one more strange than the other – and many mysteries. When Robert in the first A curse in the season, the director starts interviewing, all carefully constructed alibi threads fall apart, however, we quickly see that the investigators, along with those working in the judicial system, are also filmmakers who have delved into Durst’s biography in incredible detail. By the way, in 2010, Jarecki made a biographical drama Love and secrets/All Good Things with Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst – based on Durst’s life.
The “interview friendship” of Jarecki and Durst began with the fact of making this film. Durst is a small, thin man in his sixties who was acquitted in 2001 of killing and dismembering his neighbor in Galveston, Texas. However, it was during this time that Durst pretended to be a mute woman, wearing a wig and hoping to assume the identity of his neighbor. Why did Durst have to pretend to be a woman? In fact, this is the question that opens the first season of The Curse, which returns to the distant past in a scrupulous and incredibly exciting way. Durst is still believed to know more than he is letting on about the disappearance of his first wife in 1982. Likewise, the death of his best friend, the daughter of a Las Vegas gangster, casts a shadow over himself.
It must be said that if it weren’t for Jarecki, who also appears in the documentary series footage, some important clue would not have been found that made the past of the now deceased Durst a little clearer. However, in the great sea of ”crime shows”. A curse is one of the most exciting documentary series of the 21st century, which with a dignified backbone and intelligent ingenuity overturns the thesis that forensic documentary cinema has exhausted itself. You have to find a character whose life is bigger than cinema.
KINO RECOMMENDS DART LILAC
A selection of documentary and documentary series
THE REHEARSAL
(2022–) ★★★★
Nathan Fielder is a pioneer of idle humor and a quiet revolutionary, as evidenced by this social, semi-documentary experiment, as well as the highly successful series The Curse (2023) with Emma Stone. In this quasi-documentary series, Fielder invites volunteers to “enact” various situations, up to the shame of strangers and self-shame.
Where to watch: Tet+, Go3 and LMT on smart TV
JURY DUTY
(2023) ★★★★
One of the most unusual examples of the genre of docu-fiction – the jury of the US judicial system consists of actors and one juror (Ronald Gladden) who does not realize that he is part of a series and that everything is… staged. Once all the ethical red lights are lit, the episode of the mockumentary or mockumentary can begin.
Where to watch: Amazon Prime, AppleTV+
PRETEND IT’S A CITY
(2021) ★★★★
Fran Liebawitz is an icon of New York lifestyle, Sherpa humor and “should have been yesterday”. The jeans-wearing cultural critic, whose long-time creative partner Martin Scorsese is the creator of the series, is an excellent docu-series heroine. First of all, she hates to write, and secondly, public speaking without circumlocution is the basis of her familiarity. A timeless portrait of a city and personality where everyone can unleash their inner cynic.
Where to watch: Netflix
Source: www.diena.lv
