Fall of the House of Usher (TV Miniseries)

[selenak]

Backstory with Mike Flanagan's horror miniseries: liked Haunting of Hill House, was lukewarm at best towards Bly House, was captivated and impressed by Midnight Mass. Fall of the House of Usher, just released (on Netflix), impressed, entertained and captivated me again. I've also nicknamed it Poesque in my head in analogue to the tv miniseries Dickensian, which is a gigantic Dickens/Dickens crossover. Fall of the House of Usher, the tv show, doesn't just use the titular story, but adapts several other Poe short stories as well, and throws in a few poems for good measure. And despite the current day setting, it is an adaption, way more closely aligned with the Poe originals than Haunting of Hill House was with Shirley Jackson's novel.

Now teenage me had a phase where I was absolutely obsessed with Poe, so part of the fun for me was figuring out which modern equivalents would be used while still including the general storybeats. The clue isn't always in the title. I mean, the episode The Black Cat is a pretty straight forward adaption, just with the narrator of Poe's story swapped against one of the six children of Roderick Usher who are the supporting cast getting killed off in Poe-esque ways (this is not a spoiler, it's the very first thing we learn will happen in the opening episode which starts after they all have died and then proceeds to give us the how and why in flashbacks). But The Gold Bug has absolutely nothing to do with the Poe story of the same name; what it is, though, is a clever adaption of the Poe story William Wilson and its doppelganger themes. (There's even a William "Bill" Wilson in it, though he's not the main character who has a doppelganger (or does she?), that's Tamerlane "Tammy" Usher.) And the naming of the characters is also great fun if you know your Poe - I just about died when we met Rufus Grisworld. (Sidenote for non-Poe fans: Rufus Grisworld has some claim of being Poe's worst enemy, what with him ending up as executioner of Poe's last will and then proceeding to ruin his reputation for the next few decades.) But even if you don't know your Morella from your Ligeia, I'd call this one of Flanagan's best efforts so far.

Among other things, it's an entry in the "evil rich people soap opera" stakes, and Flanagan is reliably good with fucked up families. But he doesn't make the Ushers media or oil tycoons, no, Roderick and Madeline are in the pharmaceutical business (of course they are) and among the greatest profiteers of the opiod crisis. I love myself a horror story unafraid of directly connecting to a real life issue. And it's not just a frame work, it's intrinsical to the story and to the way the various Ushers, well, fall. At first while watching I thought given a Flanagan core trait is monologueing characters, he was being downright restrained about this here, but then it occured to me that the whole framing of the story is Roderick confessing (i.e. monologuing) to Dupin. (Also, in the last episode, the monologues are really cut loose.) What he is being restrained with is the jump scare cut. I mean, they happen, but no more than four times or so. The sense of horror usually derives from other means. Like when you realise what Victorine has been SPOILER. (And wow, was that a clever twist on The Tell Tale Heart which in retrospect was superbly set up.)

Flanagan uses his ensemble of actors from previous works, and they're reliably excellent, but there are some newbies. Which is why we get Roderick and Madeline Usher in old age played by Bruce Geenwood and Laura Roslin herself, Mary McDonnell, and both are terrific. (One of the few nitpicks I have concerns the actor who plays young Roderick, though. While the actress who plays young Madeline is fine and very believable as future Mary McDonnell, the actor playing young Roderick alas has no presence, while Greenwood as old Roderick has a lot. (And can recite Poe really well. Let the man record some of the poetry, audio guys.) While I'm nitpicking, Carl Lumbly is fine as the show's C. Auguste Dupin, but unfortunately the series' Dupin has precisely one scene where he displays any of Poe's Dupin's character traits (i.e. does what TV Tropes calls the "Sherlock Scan", and what Doyle so efficiently copied for Sherlock Holmes, the noticing of tiny details and making masterfully accurate deductions based on same) and has nothing in common with him, not even as a modern equivalent. (He's the state attorney who has been trying to Roderick Usher and Fortunato (!) Industries for their misdeeds for years.) Then again, Poe uses the device of the non-descript narrator telling someone else's tale in Fall of the House of Usher, and I'm impressed Flanagan found a way of justifying the basic narrative situation (i.e. Roderick Usher talking with Narrator Guy) of the short story over an entire miniseries in order to properly build up to the grand climax; it makes sense to let Narrator Guy be someone who really has a reason to hear the tale; it's just that naming him "Dupin" made me hope he'd do more actual detecting.

Back to praise: another newbie to the Flanagan oeuvre is Mark Hamill as the Usher Enforcer Arthur Gordon Pym. He spends the first half of the miniseries being menacing and mostly silent, with just one or two lines per episode, but then gets to do more and more, acting wise, in the second half, culminating in a scene his character has with SPOILER where he deeply, truly impressed me. (Yes, I'm fond of Luke Skywalker. Yes, I know he was superb in voice acting as the Joker in the Batman Cartoons, too. But this scene is very different again. It's basically the kind of thing Jonathan Banks gets praised for in the Breaking Bad verse, and Hamill does it, which I'm not sure I thought he had in him.)

Gore factor: well, remember that I said this show sticks a lot closer to Poe than Hill House did to Jackson? That includes the gore part. (If you have read The Black Cat or Murder in the Rue Morgue or Morella......you know what I mean.)

Biggest adaption choice surprise: No incest. Not that there's on page incest in Poe's story, but there's subtext, and certainly previous adaptions went for those vibes. But while Madeline and Roderick are close, and most, though not all of Roderick's kids have vivid sex lives, there's no incest text or subtext in either generation. It's just about the one vice no Usher is guilty of or wants to be guilty of. Prospero inviting his sister-in-law to an orgy comes closest, they're not biologically related, and nothing happens as the thing you'd expect in an adaption of Masque of the Red Death happens first. BTW, since some of the Ushers are bi or gay and all get killed off unpleasantly, there would have been the danger of Celluloid Closet subtext, except that the straight Ushers die equally unpleasantly, and in fact the candidate for worst Usher, Frederick, is the one who as far as we know never had sex with anyone but his wife in his entire life. Also Dupin is established as gay and happy with his partner since decades.)

Adaption choice that didn't work for me: other than Dupin as in name only (except for that one analytical scene), Annabell Lee. Part of this is that the actor playing young Roderick is as mentioned bad at conveying either passion or strong personality, as opposed to his older counterpart, and he's the one who has 99% of the scenes with Annabell Lee. But even if he were better, I'm not sure whether I'd have bought the "Innocent love which Roderick loses through his own corruption and never really gets over" plot the way Flanagan's writing wanted me to, and I don't think using this particular poem for the relationship between Roderick and his first wife as shown works, no matter how much it gets recited.

Most "Damm, I should have seen this coming, and YET" amazing adaption choice: can't decide between The Tell Tale Heart and the pay off to old Roderick's scene of broodingly staring at a certain wall throughout the show. For the love of God, Montresor! I mean, duh. And I didn't realize until the finale flashed back to the orginal masque ball and we saw Griswold's costume. Otoh, the update for the beating heart sound the narrator hears in Poe's story and the reason for it was so viciously effective that I really can't decide between those two.

Most obvious reality text (it's really not subtext when spoken out loud): other than the opiod crisis and Big Pharma? Mike Flanagan really doesn't like Fox News. Or the Orange Menace. And apparantly is not scared of being sued by either.

In conclusion: both thumbs up from me, but with the awareness that I'm not triggered easily. And as it turns out, I still have a soft spot for Poe.

Comments

[kore]

But he doesn't make the Ushers media or oil tycoons, no, Roderick and Madeline are in the pharmaceutical business (of course they are) and among the greatest profiteers of the opiod crisis

Hah, nice!

[eva_rosen]

I'm triggered by animal violence, so it really helped me to know beforehand that



SPOILER




all the thing with the cat was a hallucination and Leo hadn't even killed the original cat.

[bimo]

Part of this is that the actor playing young Roderick is as mentioned bad at conveying either passion or strong personality, as opposed to his older counterpart

I just finished watching the show, and as much as I liked Zach Gilford's performance in Midnight Mass where he played Riley Finn, I also felt that in this case casting was somewhat off, mostly because there is such a noticeable lack of congruence between him and Greenwood. Not only in regard to the two very different approaches to portraying Roderick that you mentioned, but also because of the two actors' virtually non-existent physical similarity.

However there might be a production-related reason for this. When I checked the Wikipedia article on The Fall of the House of Usher I learned that Bruce Greenwood, while absolutely brilliant in his role, was only a last minute replacement for Frank Langella. In Wikipedia it is stated that filming began in January 2022 and Langella was fired mid-production after a misconduct investigation in April.

So I wonder if Gilford and the original actor, Langella, had been much more in tune with each other but Flanagan had to keep already shot flashback scences for reasons of cost efficiency...

[selenak]

Isn‘t it jiust? Poe main character(s) + opiod crisis = made for each other!

Spoilery reply

[selenak]

Spoiler


I‘ve seen different takes on the fate of the original cat, but given we see the cat strolling around wearing its collar after Leo has died, i.e. literally the only time we see it when not in Leo‘s pov, my own interpretation is that indeed it did not die and that was another druggy hallucination of Leo‘s.


Spoiler

[rachelmanija]

I would have liked to have known that beforehand and was very relieved to see the original cat stroll over his corpse.

[rachelmanija]

Ohh, that makes a lot of sense.

[selenak]

That would certainly explain the lack of physical similarity between the two Rodericks. And you know, I hadn't recognized him as Riley from Midnight Mass! This despite, now that I think of it, no extensive make-up or complete beard or anything else altering his facial features.

But I think my main problem with young Roderick, aside from the disconnect to old Roderick, which isn't there with the two Madelines, or the two Dupins, is that the writing/acting for young Roderick is all tell, not show. We hear young Roderick's original instinct is to angrily confront people wronging him and Madeline has to caution him to play it smart and play the long game instead, but he doesn't really come across as that angry. I already talked about not being sold on the youthful passion for Annabel Lee. So when old Roderick says Lenore is the only good Usher because she has Annabel's morals and heart and his fire, this works for old Roderick, who certainly has drive, but for young Roderick - which fire? And now that you're telling me this same actor played Riley, I'm doubly befuddled, because Riley certainly had anger (both the open and the repressed type) and fire! And I don't think that can be tied to the switch from Langella to Greenwood, because the performance of young Roderick would have been the same.

(BTW: I think the only movie I've seen a young Frank Langella in is Dracula where he played the title role, and he, err, does not look like Zach Gilford, either. Old Frank Langella is currently associated in my mind with both Nixon in Frost/Nixon and a key supporting part in the tv show The Americans, both of which he was very good in, the later calling for him to be able to switch from fatherly mentor to ice cold handler of agents at the drop of a hat, so I imagine he would have played Roderick with much presence as well.

[kernezelda]

I watched HoU yesterday, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Such good casting and strong performances, the tension of each episode within the overarching and growing tension of the narration - I jumped a few times, but mostly felt stiff with dread and apprehension. I usually on warm evenings leave my doors open, but around the second episode, I closed and locked my doors just to fend off extra imagined potentials for terror.

The variety of relationships for the younger Usher siblings seemed as well-done and as twisted as the siblings themselves, raised in competition and striving for approval from the Ushers twins senior, all save Frederick, whose home life is 'normal' and who is incompetent and banal at work and at home. The through-line of 'heart' in the series was calculated and perfect: one shared by Roderick and Madeline, Annabel's broken by Roderick, the younger sibling set all guarded and sharp-edged, Victorine's replaced with a mechanical device that animates her lover's corpse--thud thud, thud thud, thud thud.

The only elements that didn't quite hit for me were, as you say, the young Roderick's lack of presence, and the off-screen (assumed) death of Annabel Lee. I really kept expecting that she was the body buried behind the wall he kept talking to, as otherwise her mentioned inability to live without her children seems inconsistent with the drama of all the other deaths, especially given Roderick's amplification of their love into epic poetry. (Also, I've never read the Cask of Amontillado except via meme, and only recognized that once the wine had been introduced, that it was time to go down cellar and murder someone.) Annabel Lee felt ancillary to the destined Usher twins, her importance created by Roderick's perception/tales of her to his children(himself) rather than any role in the story actual. He married her, she had children, he took the children, and she vanished. Auguste Dupin's dismissal of the grandeur of the high-flown poetry "Annabel Lee" that Roderick kept reciting felt absolutely appropriate; Roderick's mythologizing his relationship with Annabel Lee was a story he told himself to make his own choices heroic rather than criminal. He was not a mole or an informant; he was an ambitious henchman; Madeline was the brains and the drive of the pair, scheming their way to the top of their father's company and building their empire of blood and filthy lucre.

And Mark Hamill's Arthur Pym was such a departure from what I have ever expected, and so stoic and terse and resolute to the end, and I enjoyed him as a character so much: his extreme competence a far cry from Frederick's learned helplessness, Tamerlane's self-criticism, Victorine's ambition, Camille's spin; Leo's avoidance of responsibility; and Prospero's vicious vacuousness--all of them focused solely on themselves and their position in the Usher Family. Pym's attention to detail and dogged perseverance complement Madeline's thoroughness and foresight, Roderick's charisma and leadership.

[selenak]

the young Roderick's lack of presence

bimo - who doesn't disagree with us on this point - pointed out to me he played Riley in Flanagan's earlier Midnight Mass, which once again illustrates what a difference a role makes, because Riley in Midnight Mass does have presence and is a very sympathetic, tortured character - I truly hadn´t recognized him.

Re: Annabel Lee, while I agree that we're meant to see Roderick mythologizing their relationship post facto as him rewriting history to make himself feel better, a younger Dupin in the flashback is shown to be wowed not only by Annabel Lee but also by said relationship, and older Dupin says he trusted Roderick to begin with because such a wonderful woman as her truly loved him. And that brings me Annabel herself not really working for me. And it's not because she, unlike most of the Ushers, is a good person. Lenore is a good person and absolutely works for me as a character. Victorine's girlfriend and Leo's boyfriend seem by and large sympathetic, good people, and I have no problem with them, either.

It's also the one mismatch between Poe text and adaption version, I feel, because Poe's poem Annabel Lee just does not work for Roderick and his first wife at any point in their relationship, starting with the fact the poem's narrator and the woman he mourns were childhood friends and intensely close in said childhood - at best, that's Roderick and Madeline, not Roderick and Annabel. At a guess: tv Roderick needed a wife for the overall plot to work, and Annabel Lee is one of the best known poems, and hence the naming and the not quite working quotes. (Whereas both the short stories and the other poems the series draws from are really cleverly used.)

And Mark Hamill's Arthur Pym was such a departure from what I have ever expected, and so stoic and terse and resolute to the end, and I enjoyed him as a character so much

Same here. I also thought his personal ending was very fitting. Not only was he wise enough to refuse a deal with Verna but he was the only character to accept responsibility and live. In prison, yes, but he lives.

[kernezelda]

It occurs to me that since we in the real world can see the Poe refs throughout, including poetry and characters' names, is Roderick's recitation of 'Annabel Lee' meant to be his own original work, as in another life, he would have been a poet? It would be weird if all of the Poe refs were Watsonian instead of Doylist!

[selenak]

I had the impression that in-universe, this is a timeline where Poe didn't exist, and we're supposed to regard all of Roderick's Poe poetry quotes as his original work.

(BTW, this works also in a meta way, since some of the poems, though not the ones Roderick recites from, show up in Poe's short stories as the works of characters within the story.)