Because of Netflix true-crime documentaries, I’ve gotten rid of everything I ever owned that could be used as a lethal weapon. I’ve gone though the whole Clue game arsenal and tossed ’em all out. No lead pipes, candlesticks or rope in my home.
If I need to pound a nail, I go out and buy a hammer and then immediately throw it away.
All of my sharp kitchen supplies are now in the garbage. To be safe, I even got rid of my cast iron skillets. All I have now are butter knives, spoons, plastic forks, a few baking sheets and a small saucepan.
I also threw out all scissors and replaced them with those blunt Kindergarten scissors for five-year-olds.
Thank God I don’t have a staircase.
Right now, I’m looking around my living room and it doesn’t look like I could kill a squirrel with anything I have here.
Can you kill someone with a steam mop? I hope not because I think I’ve otherwise done everything I can to prevent anybody from Making a Murderer at this address.
All of this brings me to this recent entry in Netflix’s string of sweaty defendant, smarmy prosecutor, shaky old video camera footage, yell-at-the-screen, 172-hour legal epics. Murder stories that some people say are solved while others beg to differ.
I’m gonna talk about it and I’m gonna do my damndest to not drop any big spoilers.
THE NUTSHELL: A Durham, North Carolina woman suffers a violent death when she falls down the stairs of her family’s mansion one late night in 2001. Her writer husband, Michael Peterson, who was with her that night, insists that it was an accident, but the law thinks it’s murder. A loooooong trial follows.
THE GOOD: This is super-absorbing stuff that also takes its time. It has the weight of an epic. The makers had crazy access to everything. Peterson and his lawyer must have all but LIVED with this film crew for years. I also was impressed by how none of the episodes end with some lightning bolt cliffhanger. They all end very elegantly. Nothing sensational, just a simple period on the end of a sentence. “That’s enough story time for now.” It’s refreshing.
THE QUESTIONABLE: This documentary is so 200% biased in favor of Peterson that when it was over I don’t think I felt what the makers wanted me to feel, which was complete distrust of the criminal justice system. I already have plenty of distrust in it, but that’s not what I thought about as the final set of credits rolled to the tune of a Leonard Cohen song. I was more thinking about what director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade left out of it or didn’t get to show.
From the beginning to the end, this series treats the case as something that never should have happened. It portrays the people who think that Peterson did it as either opportunistic or downright crazy. They’re given no respect (and to be fair, one key witness is eventually, objectively revealed as a deceptive bag of shit). The prosecution’s side gets very little time here. (Lestrade claims that he wanted more footage with prosecutors, but they turned him down, maybe because they knew he was in Peterson’s pocket.) Even at almost thirteen hours long, I still feel like I’ve only seen half the story.
To his credit, Lestrade reveals the bias. At one point, someone from behind the camera (Lestrade himself?) steps into the frame to give Peterson a hug. Lestrade also leaves in a rant from the dead woman’s sister about her contempt for this French film company who’ve been sticking cameras up everyone’s asses through the whole process because she knows that they were brought in by Peterson in order to make a movie that portrays him as the victim.
While Peterson stands his ground, Lestrade pleads guilty. Fair enough. He’s close to Peterson and made the best film he could in that position. I wouldn’t indict a friend, either. Most of them, at least.
The good news is that we have the internet. We can research further. Lestrade is not the final voice. A year before this documentary hit Netflix, the BBC devoted a podcast to the case (Beyond Reasonable Doubt?, available on an iTunes near you). I just started listening to it and within the first half-hour, it’s already more critical of Peterson’s character than anything in the entire twelve hours or so of The Staircase.
Peterson is brainy and well-spoken while being outspoken. He has a seasoned writer’s gravity about him. You sense that he has complete confidence in everything that he says. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care if you like him–and so a lot of people don’t.
Those who do though are fiercely loyal and that’s where Peterson becomes palatable. The documentary spends a lot of time on that. His family loves him. Peterson’s two adopted daughters, in particular, show nothing but the purest unflagging devotion. His lawyer is a stalwart. This very film sticks by him for fifteen years.
Yet, you can’t shake the guy’s narcissism. He’s a classic case. Loves to hear himself talk. He’s never down to Earth. Everything he says comes from on high.
That doesn’t make him a murderer, but he does come off like a guy who could justify it so fiercely that he could convince himself that he’s innocent no matter what.
But I don’t know what I’m talking about.
No one who’s just seen this documentary and is now pontificating about it knows what they’re talking about. We’re all flies buzzing at a bright light, trying to figure out what the fuck it is.
This documentary is beautifully made and smart and it hooks you big-time, but, until someone confesses, I don’t think I’m ever going to be sure what exactly I saw here.
Watch this and join me in being totally 100% confused!
Confusion is underrated.