Freakier than fiction
BRITISH writer Alain de Botton once said that one of the necessary conditions for happiness in adulthood was to live within walking distance of a small number of good friends. I’d like to add another: your quality of life also rises if you live within walking distance of a decent DVD rental outlet. Of course, in this age of illegal downloading, the idea of DVD rentals seems increasingly archaic. Earlier this year, I took a visiting American friend to my local DVD shop in Sea Point. She was tickled pink. “I can’t believe you guys still have these!” she marvelled, and made me take a photo of her in the shop that she could stick on Facebook.
Mock me all you want; I’m still a regular patron of DVD rental places. If it wasn’t for browsing at my local one, I might never have encountered the HBO documentary series The Jinx, which is the most memorable thing I’ve seen all year.
The six-part 2015 series is directed by US filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, who was also responsible for 2003’s astonishing documentary Capturing The Friedmans, which told the true story of a middle-class father and son accused of child molestation. It sounds like bleak material — and of course it is — but Jarecki’s skill lies in capturing the ambiguity of the story. “Who do you believe?” was the film’s tagline on posters. It’s not an easy question to answer.
In The Jinx, Jarecki returns again to an ambiguous crime situation. In the the interim, the director made a feature film — 2010’s All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. That film was fiction, but based on real events: the disappearance of New York tycoon Robert Durst’s wife Kathie. Here’s where it gets weird: murder-accused Durst watched the flick, quite liked it, but decided he’d rather the director make a documentary about his case. As a result, he gave Jarecki and his co-producers unprecedented access to himself and his family background.
It’s hard to write in detail about The Jinx without giving away any of the series’ nail-biting revelations.
You’re also advised to avoid Googling Robert Durst until you’ve watched the final episode, because recent news stories about Durst all give away the show’s most dramatic moment — a moment that had me literally sitting on the edge of my couch, barely able to breathe.
Suffice it to say that Durst is not just suspected of involvement in his wife’s disappearance, but in a number of other deaths. Yet as you watch him being interviewed on camera, you’ll find yourself wondering if it’s really possible. Durst comes across as being very odd, to be sure, but he’s also a 70-something man from one of New York’s most successful business dynasties. Could he really be a serial killer?
As was the case with another favourite from this year, the murder mystery podcast, Serial, the show does some of its investigative work on camera, with the viewer invited along as witness and collaborator.
This is what makes the final few episodes so suspenseful as to be almost unbearable, because you’ve been made part of the legwork up to that point. It’s manipulative filmmaking — it gives the impression that the documentary process is much more open and transparent than it really is — but it is also hugely effective. The Jinx is the kind of show you won’t be able to stop talking about, particularly when you’ve watched the ending. It’s well worth a time-travel trip to your local DVD store.