HBO’s limited series an intriguing tale of the human condition
The women of “Big Little Lies” spend all their time surrounded by glass walls: the windows and mirrors of their comfortable commuter sedans; the plate-glass overlooking implausibly beautiful oceanfront vistas in Monterey, California; even their phone and computer screens are fragile, reflective rectangles that hem them in.
The opening credits show us the mothers, in particular, behind the wheel; kids in the back seat, distracted reflections in the rearview.
So it seems natural that, when the wealthy community
members are paraded into the police station one by one to be questioned about what happened on the night of the elementary-school fundraiser, each of the well-heeled town residents quickly checks out her own reflection in the one-way mirror of the interrogation room.
“Big Little Lies” is less about the whodunit than it is about the world.
Based on the novel by Australian Liane Moriarty, the limited miniseries represents a bonfire of the vanities for the faux-progressive, self-satisfied set.
The first episode, which premieres tonight on HBO, reveals the inciting incident: a violent death on a rocky shore behind an oceanfront mansion where a charity gala was in full swing.
But after acknowledging that a body has been found and that the concerned parties are in police custody, “Big Little Lies” stops explaining. The four episodes released to critics don’t clarify who died.
Instead, the show, directed with acuity by Jean-Marc Vallee, unfolds its mystery like a delicate flower, with teased hints that are sometimes flashbacks, sometimes flash-forwards and sometimes glimpses of imagined fantasy. Accompanying the visions are snippets of the interrogations of witnesses, other Monterey residents.
They take on the part of nasty Greek chorus: competitive, judgmental and shamelessly eager to dish.
A story begins to form — beginning with the fateful day that overbearing and pushy Madeline Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon) broke her heel while dropping her daughter off at school and was helped up by shy single mother Jane Chapman (Shailene Woodley), a Monterey newcomer.
Witherspoon inhabits the unforgiving contours of a character who’s relentlessly awful. Twice-married Madeline is entrenched in the Monterey social scene but is so void of self-respect that every conversation turns into an absurdly heightened power play.
She’s a bully in designer yoga pants, and any sympathy she might get as a valiant, involved mother is undermined by her constant posturing.
Disagreements become entrenched feuds all too often. As she says cheerfully
to Jane, bottling up that day’s rage: “No, I love my grudges. I tend to them like little pets.”
It would be simple to flatten this role into mere villainy, but in Witherspoon’s hands, Madeline’s rage is oceanic — seething and vast, concerned only with expanding its territory.
Like the character Tony Soprano, she is plagued with an endless need to be respected in her territory: Monterey’s first-grade social scene.
In one example of ruthless pettiness, she undermines rival Renata (Laura Dern) by drawing invitees away from Renata’s daughter’s birthday party. Indeed, the characters all have kids who attend first grade together.
“Big Little Lies” tells the story of mothers living through, for, and around their doted-upon children. Thus the drama is usually driven by the vagaries of spoiled 6-year-olds wielding iPhones.
Madeline’s best friend is Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman), far more reserved, with twin boys and a younger husband. Outside the life she obsessively curates for her Facebook page, Celeste is being abused — and is strangely aroused by it. She is being boxed into a life that doesn’t make her happy but, on some deeper level, is inflamed by being caged.
Kidman is so good at becoming this flawed and strange character that she is hauntingly arresting; her scenes with husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgard) are tense and obsessively engaging, ripe with subtext and violent eroticism.
It’s difficult to overstate how Vallee’s direction elevates the slightly pulpy material, so that “Big Little Lies” isn’t wallowing in its own acrimonious plot twists. The series has the continuous, clear vision of cinema, with every episode having been adapted to the screen by David E. Kelley and directed by Vallee.
Much of the show’s direction is dedicated to demonstrating how infrequently these women in particular can find ways to channel their well-earned, slowly simmering furies.
It does not fit into the neat, transparent compartments of tranquil California motherhood — and, one day, something breaks.