Mind-bending mystery breaks new ground
“Landscapers” is a murder mystery, but it’s not particularly concerned with whodunit. It doesn’t even really care why or when. This deftly experimental four-part HBO series is all about the storytelling itself, chiefly the ways that film interacts with the imagination to create a different plane of truth and reality.
If that sounds heady, know that the payoff, jagged and dizzying, is well worth the effort.
Premiering Monday, the limited series is based on the story of Christopher and Susan Edwards (David Thewlis and Olivia Colman, both outstanding), an old married couple sentenced to life in prison for murdering Susan’s parents and burying them in a shallow grave in the backyard of their home near Mansfield, England. Eccentric collectors of movie memorabilia — they boasted that they were pen pals with Gerard Depardieu; Susan was obsessed with Gary Cooper — they also were gifted liars who seem to have talked themselves into believing each elaborate string of falsehoods they uttered.
The “Landscapers” team, including director and executive producer Will Sharpe and writer and executive producer Ed Sinclair (Colman’s husband), could have merely hinted at the unreliable narrator angle and played it fairly straight. Instead they’ve blown up the whole concept of the crime procedural.
Some scenes are shot in black and white and intercut with the 1952 film “High Noon,” a favorite of Christopher and Susan’s. Sometimes we see the couple narrating their account at their version of the scene of the crime. At one point the police
investigators and Susan’s lawyer (Dipo Ola) leave a scene in progress and walk over to a separate soundstage, where Susan and Christopher’s version of events is rigorously challenged.
It’s all a means of interrogating the art of storytelling, or, if you will, lying. Done sloppily, this sort of thing could be annoying or too clever by half. Some might still feel this way, but many will find the show’s narrative derring-do rather thrilling, a perfect match of
narrative and style, and a highflying display of deconstruction.
Some of the interview sequences feel like the work of Errol Morris, a master at playing with truth and subjectivity in cinema. At other times, as Christopher and Susan disappear into their own fantasies, the series shares similarities with Peter Jackson’s “Heavenly Creatures,” another film in which reality all but ceases to exist.
All of this makes it easy to
overlook certain down-to-earth facts. Such as: The acting in “Landscapers” is across-theboard brilliant, starting with Colman and Thewlis. Both stars have to perform at a wide range, from the surety of putting across an elaborate hoax with confidence, to the knowledge, deep down, that their house of cards will have to crumble. The real trick is blurring these two states until you can’t tell one from the other. These are wickedly intelligent performances.
The supporting players are just as strong, especially Kate O’flynn as a tenacious police investigator who grills the suspects and guides us through their obfuscation.
“Landscapers” dares to cast aside expectations and dares the viewer to come along for the ride. It is wonderfully in tune with film’s capacity to make up its own truth.