HBO Max’s The Staircase review: finding the limits of true crime

Paper:The Staircase This is totally unnecessary. Kathleen Peterson was killed in North Carolina as a business executive in 2001. Michael Peterson was later tried and convicted.The StaircaseThe ID channel shouts out for the copycat documentaries. So what’s the point of wrapping those same events in a new package and selling them — again?

The typical line for true-crime projects trying to sidestep accusations of exploitation is that it’s about “honoring the victims,” or at least exploring their psychology. Campos’ 2016 film Christine accomplished this admirably, dramatizing the troubled emotions and thwarted ambitions that led to Florida news anchor Christine Chubbuck’s on-air death in 1974. The same can’t really be said for the five episodes of The Staircase made available for review: Sure, you’ve got Toni Collette as Kathleen, building on her fearless reputation with dinner-table scenes that can’t help but evoke her famous “I am your mother!” monologue from It is a hereditary matter. But in terms of illuminating what made either Peterson tick, Campos’ version ofThe Staircase is no more forthcoming than Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s original.

Fictionalized StaircaseThe case is less about the details of the case and more about its meta-narrative (or people). Campos’ version of the story has secured a fantastic, high-profile cast that also features Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, as well as Juliette Binoche, Michael Stuhlbarg, Rosemarie DeWitt, Sophie Turner, and Parker Posey in supporting roles. However, casting was a problem early in this series of eight episodes. The StaircaseIt has the feel of a prestige reenactment. It is a combination of the bloody, battered dummy and disturbingly graphic re-creations in which Collette dies again and again. This creates a dark atmosphere that defies all attempts to promote post-mortem dignity.

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But for those viewers who aren’t turned off by the camera passively observing Collette’s gurgling death rattlesThe StaircaseIt does strengthen the argument for its existence. Particularly true for dramatized versions made by the French film crew who produced the original StaircaseThe narrative is open: There are moments when something skews too close to fandom. However, there are revelations about the making The StaircaseEverything that has gone before is seen in a different light.

De Lestrade’s version of The Staircase is sometimes cited as the pinnacle of true-crime documentary filmmaking, a serious-minded exploration of big ideas about justice filmed in a detached cinéma vérité style that purports to simply present the facts of the case in a balanced way. By that metric, Campos’ approach feels distinctly the opposite: speculative, shocking, and built to entertain. But there were serious breaches of documentary ethics behind the scenes of de Lestrade’s StaircaseThey can change the moral balance between them. Campos pulls off a skillful meta-trick weaving these into his narrative, filming the first few episodes with a bias toward Michael Peterson’s side of the story, then showing why the makers of the documentary might themselves have been biased.

The documentary versionThe StaircaseThis approach, which focuses on questions such as prejudice and objective truth and is very clever and appropriate, can be used to address the difficult issues of prejudice. Campos accurately recreates the memorable images from the documentary. Campos shows Campos an eerie shot with a tape recording that plays audio of a woman crying out for help. In both versions, it’s part of a sequence depicting tests done by Peterson’s defense to prove that there was no way he could have heard his wife’s dying screams from his position next to the family’s pool. But in de Lestrade’s film, it’s more visceral, and therefore more haunting — a reminder of Kathleen’s suffering in what’s otherwise a very clinical documentary. Campos’ rendition is full of both humanizing texture and macabre shock value, which makes the faithfulness with which he recreates this moment feel more like a winking Easter egg than anything.

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The attention to detail extends to the set design: When the camera turns its gaze to a pile of VHS tapes on Peterson’s desk (Amadeus! Oklahoma! The Third Man And Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for those interested), there’s an implicit promise that this is a detail taken straight from life. The Staircase does do a good job of establishing the series’ banal, moneyed late-’90s/early-’00s suburban milieu, although it’s less meticulous when it comes to establishing how Peterson’s wealth and status factored in to his prosecution for murder. The second half of The StaircaseNorth Carolina found out that Peterson was not married but had affairs with other men and decided it would be best to hang him.

For her part, Posey — who plays prosecutor Freda Black — is acting in the style of a Ryan Murphy true-crime drama, doing her version of Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark with a Southern accent and a prurient, homophobic fixation on Michael Peterson’s bisexuality. Although this is true, it may not be the truth. But the performance is exaggerated in a way that doesn’t jive with the realistic portrayals of more sympathetic players like the Petersons’ adopted daughters, Margaret (Turner) and Martha (Odessa Young). However, depending on whom you speak to, it is possible that the prosecutors involved in this case. Were cartoon villains. Kathleen Peterson’s death was mysterious from the jump, and the enigma only deepens as details are parceled out in each subsequent episode.

Campos takes some interesting and creative decisions The StaircaseFrom the larger meta-framework, to the decision not to include a courtroom scene in the story entirely. Even the series’ less tasteful moments can be seen as bold direction, a refusal to look away from the distressing reality of death. There may indeed be no real “truth” about what happened the night Kathleen Peterson died, only a mountain of circumstantial evidence and curious onlookers bringing their own agendas to the case. It is up to this series to stay true to the emotional truth. StaircaseDo not lose yourself in the details.

Three episodes from the first season of The StaircaseOn HBO Max, the episode will debut May 5. Every Thursday, new episodes are uploaded.