Big Little Lies

Game of Thrones meets Desperate Housewives

Recently Nóri and I watched Thor: Ragnarok, a movie where the literal Goddess of Death works to destroy a whole civilization, The Night Manager, a spy-thriller about a double agent working to bring down a ruthless arms dealer, and Big Little Lies, a miniseries about three housewives taking their kids to school. The first was passable, the second was pretty good, but the third one easily blows away anything we watched this year. Spoiler-free review.

Thor: Hammerfall is plot without a story, funny moments without jokes, and spectacle without action. The Night Manager is a carefully crafted, tension-filled miniseries that manages to be original without reinventing the genre. Big Little Lies, on the other hand, grabs you, pulls you in, and – what I find extremely rare nowadays – sticks with you for a long time. Watching it feels like watching an early season of Game of Thrones but with the castles of Westeros replaced by the middle-class limbo of Monterey, California. You thought the Red Wedding was betrayal of the highest order? Wait until you see Madeline Martha Mackenzie take her daughter to see Disney on Ice. The Mountain and Viper duel pales in comparison to the Jane v Renata scuffle, and brooding champion Jon Snow’s moments of deep introspection feel empty to Celeste’s revelatory sea-gazing bouts.

The edge of your seat

The reason why Thor: Galadriel’s Revenge and many other films nowadays (looking at you too, Rogue One) fail as movies is because it’s impossible to get overly excited. I bet you any amount of money that based on just the first act of Thor: Götterdämmerung, right up until Hela first shows up, even a child can piece together every major plot element of the remaining two hours. Thor fights Hela, he loses, he gets banished, has to fight his way all the way back to Asgard, fights her again, he wins. Even the “twist” of throwing in Satan to finish off the baddie at the end (whoops, spoilers) was given away in the opening scene. The “meh, I thought this would happen” is not the reaction a movie should induce.

Instead, Big Little Lies goes with the proven “OMG! I can’t wait to see what’ll happen next!” approach. We get character drama, conflict, growth, failure, healing, and even an appropriate amount of comedy, all wrapped up in the guise of a murder mystery. Every scene and every line of dialogue reveals more about the characters past lives, present feelings, and future fears. It’s almost as if dialogue could be used for something other than exposition or pointless quipping! The way the stakes rise and the mysteries unfold feels so natural you’ll suddenly find yourself caring about things like little Amabella’s birthday party. Not only do you want to desperately see how the story continues, this is achieved without throwing in a single cliffhanger: each episode is its own story to tell and thus has a clear beginning, middle, end, and most importantly in a series, a purpose.

Into Darkness

While the style of the series is hypnotic and addictive, it would all come to nothing without a decent content. Fortunately, the content is just as strong as its dramatization. Fair warning though: this series is dark. There are the occasional moments of hilarity or relief, but watching this series feels mostly devastating, often heart-clenching, and sometimes genuinely terrifying. These feelings are further amplified by the fact that each character is painfully, brutally aware of her predicament. This self-awareness, however, gives them no way to climb out of their situations. The women are trapped in their middle-class existence, trapped in their gender roles, trapped in their families, but because they know it, they try to struggle, and while their struggles are mostly fruitless, it’s both painful and delightful to watch. This darkness is also frighteningly subtle and nuanced, as the series remains brutally grounded in reality. That’s what makes it hit so hard.

Legally Rouge: Come for Witherspoon, stay for Kidman

The leads are phenomenal. There’s nothing more entertaining than the way Reese Witherspoon waltzes through her lines. She’s energetic, obnoxious, and impossible not to hate, but also impossible not to sympathize with. Her character – even though her story is not as interesting as the others’ – takes center stage. This fact made it all the more remarkable for Nicole Kidman to sneak up on her and steal the spotlight. As impressive and enjoyable it was to watch Witherspoon’s delivery as Madeline, it was Kidman’s stellar performance in the role of Celeste that stuck with me. Celeste is a much less confident, much less assertive character with occasional, glorious outbursts of energy. Kidman plays a very difficult character with care and sophistication. Shailene Woodley who turns 26 today is also fine, playing Jane, a single mom. The excellent cast is rounded out by Alexander Skarsgard as Perry (who may have trouble getting laid after this role), and Laura Dern as Renata (I mean, seriously, there’s nothing scarier in the whole world right now than Alexander Skarsgard slowly walking into a room). The children deserve special mention. Not only do they manage to not ruin their respective scenes, director Jean-Marc Vallée and casting director David Rubin somehow pulled off the impossible and managed to turn them into an enjoyable (and adorable) part of the series.

The Bonnie Situation

As much as I loved this show, I also have to talk about the negatives. I have mixed feelings about a few elements of the direction. While it sure feels stylish to have your characters brood over a cliff and look out over the raging sea, after five or six instances it gets a bit old. Every main character gets at least three rounds of these. It’s moody and it’s appropriate, but it's also repetitive. Same goes for the hand-held camerawork. Again, it serves a very clear purpose: we as an audience are not a part of the story, we’re merely overhearing what the characters have to say. We listen into their conversations, peek into their windows, creep up on them to watch them (try to) have sex, and it works. But it’s still nauseating and feels uninventive after a while. Such things work very well in a 2-hour movie, but for 7 hours of screentime, this is just a bit too much and just a bit too little at the same time. Anyway, it’s forgivable, and people don’t actively notice if the story is good (and it is). What I can’t forgive, is Zoe Kravitz’s Bonnie. It’s just bad. She brings so little into her role that I have a feeling that half of her scenes have been cut as a result, leaving some glaring holes in the overall story. In the book version, Bonnie gets a story of her own and there’s a reason why she’s there for the climax. In the film, she’s just there and don’t ask why. This character should have been Little Miss Perfect, the second coming of Lisa Simpson. Instead we get… well, we get nothing. SAD!

Maternity, leave!

If you are a mom, want to be a mom, or you are currently involved with a person who is a mom or wants to be a mom, then definitely watch this series. Even if you have no such aspirations, you may still be entertained. If Thor: Smash was already too much drama for you, then stay away.

November 15, 2017

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