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<\/a>Being part of this family is just fuckin’ exhausting isn’t it, sisters? Sisters? Oh, crap. This’ll make for an awkward dinner conversation.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n There are two lessons to take from\u00a0Ordeal by Innocence\u00a0<\/b><\/i>(2018), a BBC<\/strong><\/em> mini-series based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name.<\/p>\n First, this may be the most insanely dysfunctional family I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n Second, if you’re looking for revenge, don’t monologue[1]<\/sup><\/a> about it<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n But maybe this was a cautionary tale about studying competing theological systems.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Don’t skip the ending. As if you could.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 1<\/sup>I ran across the term monologuing<\/em> in The Incredibles<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2026 Continue reading
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