David Thomson - Murder and the Movies

MURDER AND THE MOVIES

DAVID THOMSON

For Kate

We Were Sitting There Alone

Copyright 2020 by David Thomson.

All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail sales.press@yale.edu (U.S. office) or sales@yaleup.co.uk (U.K. office).

Set in Janson Roman and Felix Titling types by Integrated Publishing Solutions.
Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019948577
ISBN 978-0-300-22001-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Lady Macduff: Sirrah, your father is dead. And what will you do now? How will you live?

Son: As birds do, mother.

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene II

If history has taught us anything... you can kill anyone.

MICHAEL in The Godfather, Part II

It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a streaky side of bacon.

CHARLES DICKENS, Oliver Twist

There is no point in using death to simplify ourselves.

JOHN BERGER, and our faces, my heart, brief as photos (1984)

We like to think were decent people, the way you try to be, but there we were, counting our fingers to recall how many characters had been murdered in the first season of Ozark.

I am talking about entertainment, some fun at the end of the dayand Ozark was a hit show. So do we absorb these spectacular killings to have a good time? Take away murder, would the show register? Does its fun allay the tread of death on our stairs?

Well, there was Bruce, Lucy began, wasnt that his name? Martys partner.

Plus Bruces woman, I added. Wife or lover, Im not sure which.

They were both dissolved in acid, werent they? Imagine that. She shuddered.

I think we were happy.

And Wendys lover, I saidit was a contest now. I dont recall his name. But I can hear the thump as his body landed on the sidewalk.

Oh yes! she saideager in her gentleness. Tossed off the building! What floor was it? The twentieth?

It may have been higherit was in Chicago. He would have been alive coming down.

We were hurrying by then, in a quiz game. Of course, Dell was offed, as well as Dells bodyguard, both taken out so swiftly. But with a rush of clarity or release, if only because Dell had seemed to be in charge of the game, immaculate, suave and sinister. But if Dell went, wasnt anyone vulnerable?

There was Bobby Dean, the nasty boss at The Lickety Splitz strip bar. And Masons wifethat was regrettable because she must have been killed soon after having her baby. Then there was Garcia, the man from the cartel who delivered the money in a vanabsurd quantities of cash so that Marty and Wendy had to stay up all night packing it in the walls of their home. No one ever said Ozark was credible, except for every hour at a time.

And the brothers, she said. Russ and whats his name, electrocuted, burning in the dark. I couldnt watch that.

Right, I said, the blood seemed to boil out of them. I wonder, is that what happens in electrocution?

Theyd know, wouldnt they, the writers? It was probably researched. We pondered the iniquity of it, and our status as connoisseurs.

She began again. And I think there was someone called Louis. I remember the name, but I dont know who he was or how he was killed.

Poor Louis, I said, hoping to be ironic. Thats eleven. I had been keeping notes. And this was just the first season.

Amazing, we agreed, while understanding that perhaps the most remarkable thing was how wedecent people trying to do betterhad been so attached to this Jacobean slaughter in Missouri. Ten nights in a row, we watched two episodes back to back, rationing ourselves with its first two seasons, waiting for the third. And if we sometimes felt we had to look away, still we watched. If we couldnt follow the tortuous story, we held on in delicious desperation. Because we didnt want it to end. Wed have taken a few more murders, I think; we know thats what the show does.

You see, Ozark is very good.

In saying that, Im thinking of what is called the concept (created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams): of how Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), a financial adviser in Chicago, gets in such trouble with the cartel that he has to retreat to Ozark country in Missouri, with his wife Wendy and their two children, Charlotte and Jonah, and get into the frenzied business of laundering immense sums of cartel cash. Its a story of a family trying to stay a family, swept away on the flood of money and drawn to the point of murder, watching it, beholding it, and doing it. And of how the endlessly resourceful Marty becomes stunned by the compromises and the confusion of his terrible life, until his attempt at kindness withers, but sweet-smiling Wendy (Laura Linney) emerges as the polite monster who may drag the family to safety.

Not that safety is a sure prospect in this Ozark country. But the peril is so well shaped and written, thats what the critic can say. And it is acted with that brimming American fluency that prefers acting to beingisnt that our last way of getting through, of staying in character or coherent when ones life is a shambles, and so unwritten? Think of the women in the show, so piercing and scary: look at Ruth (Julia Garner), the Ozark rat, with a clenched face and squeezed voice. Shes uneducated, just feral, but feeling an alien urge to be respectable, and unable to utter the yearning that wants to be Mrs. Marty Byrde. Meanwhile the real occupier of that role, Wendy, accepts her ruined freedom and self-expression in becoming duplicitous and lethal. You guess shell run for office in a future season; she is ready. I wonder about a hushed confrontation between that Wendy and Helen (Janet McTeer), the cartel lawyer, so refined, so groomed, so tall and implacable. One day perhaps the two of them may have a big scene togetherbut all Ozarkians should be fearful of seeing and hearing it.

We have twin sofas to watch from, Lucy and I; the binge is mutual; neither of us would think of watching without the other. Marty and Wendy keep saying they must tell each other everything; but then they turn secretive or isolated. And Lucy and I try to be decent, with about 0.01 percent of the money Marty has to launder. But one of the wicked lessons in Ozark is that laundering, discounting, lying to yourself and others comes with most money, no matter the amount. There is little protection or trust in the struggle to survive. The FBI man, Roy Petty, is the worst person in sight, but he loves his mother. Fatalism takes the place of humor, so Marty is a better parent to Ruth than to his own daughter.

Ozark is an open prison in which murder is not limited to people who get in your way. It is applied to vaguer things, like truth, law, society, and our future. Parts of Iceland are melting away; a similar dissolution is affecting the Statue of Liberty and the idea of a fair election. Meanwhile the Byrdes are reckoning to build a casino in Ozark, while urging their own kids to be honest and upright. The dark water of the lake can look calm in late light, but waterboarding is another current in the show.