I use ‘movie’ in a loose sense, the idea of a story, told in a theatrical format, committed to film or other medium which permits extensive editing. The filming of a play might not qualify; a TV mini-series, on the other hand, appears to fit the definition.
This particular mini-series was broadcast initially last April, but in Britain. I’ll call it ‘Belated’ because that’s how it feels.
Being part of this family is just fuckin’ exhausting isn’t it, sisters? Sisters? Oh, crap. This’ll make for an awkward dinner conversation.
There are two lessons to take from Ordeal by Innocence (2018), a BBC mini-series based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name.
First, this may be the most insanely dysfunctional family I’ve ever seen.
Second, if you’re looking for revenge, don’t monologue[1] about it. In this story about a dead step-son who is the sardonic witness to the family’s dysfunction, it’s his inclination to spew his plans for revenge which results in his untimely demise.
I shan’t get too much further into this movie, because my Arts Editor and I both found it difficult to connect names to faces and, sometimes, motivations to characters. Suffice it to say that the first victim in this three-victim story seems to have managed to inspire every character, with perhaps the exception of the maid, with a reason to commit mayhem upon her person; the second, our monologuer, might or might not be the fall guy, and the third also let his bitterness get the better of him. Or perhaps the story-tellers just tired of him. Where there’s a conscienceless murderer handy, there’s a way, as the old saying goes.
I thought this movie came close to being top-flight. There was the building suspense, the disbelief at each revelation of a new facet of dysfunction, the suggestion that the surrounding culture is also at fault, it was all fairly interesting. But I didn’t quite get there. Perhaps it was the subject matter, which is certainly not inspirational; nor was it easy to draw lessons from it, other than Don’t be English.
But maybe this was a cautionary tale about studying competing theological systems.
In the end, it’s about a collection of foster children trying to survive a family embedded in a society of hypocritical taboos and social expectations, and how their reaction to it can be equally horrible.
Don’t skip the ending. As if you could.
1I ran across the term monologuing in The Incredibles (2004), where it is used to describe a villain who stops in the middle of the action to describe his evil plans to the hero, who, at the time, happens to be in a tight spot. I transfer the term loosely here, but the spirit is the same: announcing plans to the presumably helpless, who turn out to still be potent.
