Certainty is a strange drug in ‘The Staircase’
HBO Max’s new limited series “The Staircase” asks plenty of questions, but it might make you ask one as well: Why? Why dedicate eight hours to a true-crime story rooted in 20-yearold events that has already been dissected in a popular documentary series?
In other words, this one better be good.
And it is, at least through the five episodes made available to critics. “The Staircase” is exceptionally smart television, an examination of truth, guilt and self-delusion that crackles with ideas and great performances. It continually shows that the how is more important than the what in storytelling. In this series a seemingly simple glance, or an innocuous exchange, can pack a hidden world of meaning.
Colin Firth is the engine that keeps it all moving. He plays Michael Peterson, a Durham, N.C., novelist convicted of murdering his wife Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette) in 2001. He claimed she fell down the stairs, and he talked most of his family into believing him, or at least saying
they did. Meanwhile, a French documentary crew was on hand to record every step. (Its series, also titled “The Staircase,” can be streamed on Netflix.)
Antonio Campos, who created the new HBO series and directed most of the episodes, lays down his stakes with an opening epigraph from Pontius Pilate: “Truth? What is that?” The question relates not so much to Peterson’s guilt or innocence as to the perception of those surrounding him, from his intricately blended family (it’s complicated) to his legal team (led by Michael Stuhlbarg’s quietly slick David Rudolf ). The documentary maestro Errol Morris has made a career examining the idea that we choose to believe whatever helps us sleep at night. “The Staircase” takes this concept and runs with it, but it’s consistently subtle in its approach. For all that’s going on for all to see, there’s even more just below the surface.
Firth plays Peterson as a narcissist with an inferiority complex, a selfimportant martyr who never breaks, publicly or privately, in the conviction of his innocence. He seems to have convinced even himself. He’s also got a family full of enablers, including two screwup sons (Dane DeHaan and Patrick Schwarzenegger) who march lockstep with Dad, and a pair of daughters (Sophie Turner and Odessa Young) who seem less certain. The cast here isn’t just uniformly excellent; it functions as a single organism, bending and breaking as a unit, from the stars to the bit players.
Campos also keeps things moving visually, employing some dazzling camera setups that blur past and present and accentuate the cavernous feel of the Peterson home. And the documentary element, which feels a little extraneous at first, gradually weaves into the central theme of truth and fiction, with a deeply felt performance by Vincent Vermignon as the director trying to both get it right and tell a great story without being charmed by his subject.
Certainty is a hell of a drug in “The Staircase,” a weapon wielded by a convincing conniver who might just believe his own stories. Truth? What is that?