Alias Grace (TV Review)
Nov. 15th, 2017 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakaka the tv miniseries based on Margaret Atwood's novel of the same name. I have read said novel, but was many years ago. While I remembered roughly the plot, the characterisations and a few lines that stuck into my memory, many of the details had faded, and thus I didn't do a constant compare and contrast when watching. (Later, I checked, and the tv version is indeed very faithful to the book, minus the cutting and trimming of some subplots.)
Alias Grace could be described as many things: a historical series, a true crime series, an elegant variation of the unreliable narrator principle, a meditation on storytelling and gender - and much more. Margaret Atwood based her novel on the historical figure of Grace Marks, who arrived in Canada from Ireland when she was 12, and got convicted of the murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and suspected of murder of his pregnant housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, at age 15. I mention this above spoiler cut because it's brought up right at the start of both novel and tv show; their story begins about 15 years later, when the imprisoned Grace is also working as a servant in the home of the governor of the penitentiary she's serving time at, and starts to get visits by Dr. Simon Jordan, an alienist (= early version of therapist), who was hired to find out whether she is a "hysteric" rather than a criminal, and what lies behind her claim not to remember the murders.
Sarah Gadon plays Grace, Sarah Polley wrote the adaption, and Mary Harron directed all episodes. All of them deliver superb work. Yes, Sarah Gadon in the flashbacks doesn't look like a 12 or 15 years old girl, but you easily forgive that because she's so very, very good as Grace. Who, as a much later appearing character once observes, is Sherezade, telling stories for her life; what in these stories is true or false depends not just on the beholder and whom she's telling the stories to but how they are framed through the circumstances of Grace's life. If you're easily triggered, Grace goes through a lot of abuse, but it's never filmed exploitatively. At the same time, she's in the present day time frame always in control of herself and her stories, no matter how dire her situation, and that's breathtaking to watch. All the supporting players are excellent as well, up to and including Paul Gross (yes, that one) and Anna Paquin as the two murder victims in waiting. Given how much tv and film in the past and present is about male anger, it's worth pointing out this particular story is about female anger, and not in an easily solved way. And it's an enigma tale. DS9 joke at the end: Garak would approve.
Alias Grace could be described as many things: a historical series, a true crime series, an elegant variation of the unreliable narrator principle, a meditation on storytelling and gender - and much more. Margaret Atwood based her novel on the historical figure of Grace Marks, who arrived in Canada from Ireland when she was 12, and got convicted of the murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and suspected of murder of his pregnant housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, at age 15. I mention this above spoiler cut because it's brought up right at the start of both novel and tv show; their story begins about 15 years later, when the imprisoned Grace is also working as a servant in the home of the governor of the penitentiary she's serving time at, and starts to get visits by Dr. Simon Jordan, an alienist (= early version of therapist), who was hired to find out whether she is a "hysteric" rather than a criminal, and what lies behind her claim not to remember the murders.
Sarah Gadon plays Grace, Sarah Polley wrote the adaption, and Mary Harron directed all episodes. All of them deliver superb work. Yes, Sarah Gadon in the flashbacks doesn't look like a 12 or 15 years old girl, but you easily forgive that because she's so very, very good as Grace. Who, as a much later appearing character once observes, is Sherezade, telling stories for her life; what in these stories is true or false depends not just on the beholder and whom she's telling the stories to but how they are framed through the circumstances of Grace's life. If you're easily triggered, Grace goes through a lot of abuse, but it's never filmed exploitatively. At the same time, she's in the present day time frame always in control of herself and her stories, no matter how dire her situation, and that's breathtaking to watch. All the supporting players are excellent as well, up to and including Paul Gross (yes, that one) and Anna Paquin as the two murder victims in waiting. Given how much tv and film in the past and present is about male anger, it's worth pointing out this particular story is about female anger, and not in an easily solved way. And it's an enigma tale. DS9 joke at the end: Garak would approve.
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Date: 2017-11-15 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-16 09:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-15 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-16 09:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-16 12:16 am (UTC)(I had the worst case of "And *you* were there! And *you*! And *you*!")
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Date: 2017-11-17 10:53 am (UTC)I know I've been a horrible correspondent lately. Always reading, always wanting to reply, but never quite managing to do so because of Darth Real Life and, no use denying it, also a rather strong case of binge watching. (In early October, Cavendish finally gave in to the temptation of Netflix because of Discovery.)
To cut a long story short, I figured that nodding along to your Alias Grace observations might be the easiest way to signal that I'm still out there. The alternatives would have been either a very long but unfortunately rather half-baked comment on your Blade Runner 2049 entry or a bunch of losely connected Discovery observations.
(I only warmed up to characters and crew during the last three or four episodes, the Mudd time loop episode was the first one that made me feel that Discovery is a show that I'd actively and positively like to continue watching.)
But back to Alias Grace: I've seldom seen an adaption so very bone chilling and consequent in its execution. One final question, though. What do you make of Jeremiah the Peddler?
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Date: 2017-11-18 05:51 am (UTC)Jeremiah: a good take on the trickster trope, I thought, which is why I'm glad the show (or the novel) don't reveal what was really going on with him. He appears to be helpful to Grace (and the sole male character who isn't creeping on her at any point, though in all fairness Dr. Jordan only does so in his own imagination and behaves professionally in reality; I feel the AV Club reviewer, for example, is harder on him than he deserves), but there is a question mark about it. Which is as it should be with tricksters. Incidentally, I do think he wanted to help her by setting up that seance, that to him, it was a clear set-up because he wanted to give Grace the chance to (fakedly) declare her innocence so Dr. Jordan would be pushed to write a favorable report. That Grace doesn't do so and what happens instead is one of the great ambiguities of the show. If she's faking the entire Mary Whitney possession, why do so in a way that makes her situation worse, not better? (If Dr. Jordan had written any report on this at all, as he tells the Reverend, Grace would have been either put back into the asylum which she hated, because it would have made her sound insane; 19th century spiritualism wasn't an accepted law defense. Or, if Jordan's report had expressed the opinion that Grace was faking it, it would have gotten her tried for the murder of Nancy - which she never was, she'd been on trial solely for Kinnear -, which "Mary" had just admitted to.) Otoh, all that "Mary" says is so pointed that it's hard to believe Grace wasn't stage managing. Then again, "Mary" as a seperate persona developed by Grace's subconscious due to all the abuse she'd suffered would fit with modern pyschology. (And seems to be the theory Jordan mostly believes when he quits.) And because it's Margaret Atwood, you can't even completely exclude that the supernatural explanation - it truly is the ghost of Mary Whitney speaking - is the real one. Like I said, I dig the ambiguity.
To bring this back to Jeremiah: when he's reading Grace's palm in her youth, he seemingly starts out cheerfully faking it as a way of banter, and then gets surprised by truly seeing something about her future. Which could indicate Jeremiah, in addition to being a trickster, is another trope occasioally appearing in fantasy, the conman/woman pretending to have supernatural gifts who is surprised by the discovery she/he does have indeed supernatural gifts. In which case he could have intended to fake hypnotize Grace and ended up actually hypnotizing her.
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Date: 2017-11-19 10:56 am (UTC)The perfectly ambivalent take on the supernatural would make a lot of sense to me as well. Especially, since the whole apple peel business is pointing in the same direction.
And because it's Margaret Atwood, you can't even completely exclude that the supernatural explanation - it truly is the ghost of Mary Whitney speaking - is the real one.
I really must catch up on Atwood. Btw., Cavendish recently read Handmaid's Tale and despite his initial hesitation ended up greatly impressed by the novel. The north rhine-westphalian school curriculum requires his students to read one dystopian/utopian novel in class, so he is always looking for material that goes beyond the usual suspects... (He usually offers students a list of about ten potential candidates to chose from and will definitely include Atwood this year.)