On the heels of Hulu’s incredibly
successful The Handmaid’s Tale, comes
another Margaret Atwood adaptation — this time of her 1996 historical novel, Alias Grace. It’s Netflix’s foray into
nineteenth-century costume drama but with more vomit, violence and child abuse
than we’ve come to expect in the genre and that’s just in Episode 1.
 |
| Netflix's Alias Grace (2017) |
Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon) has
been in prison for 15 years for a murder she may or may not have committed when
alienist Dr Simon Jordan is sent to interview her by a group lobbying for her
release. Grace, who is more used to doctors measuring her head than asking what
goes on inside it, is suspicious, unsure what to make of the psychoanalysis
we’ve come to expect in our modern crime dramas. But she begins her story
nonetheless, and, through frequent flashbacks, we learn about her immigration
from Ireland to Canada, mother’s death and father’s drunkenness.
Gadon is compelling, her Irish
lilt believable and poetic, her stare intense. But Edward Holcroft, as Dr
Simon, is a little two dimensional in this first instalment — a plot device to
get Grace to talk. I hope that in later episodes the frame story is developed
further to stop the interruptions from getting old.
 |
| Mary and Grace in Alias Grace |
The art direction is dark and gritty.
I preferred the close ups, for instance in the prison or below deck on the
ship, to the scenes where we could see the unconvincing backdrops. There’s a
particularly arresting montage where we see a succession of beds being covered
by quilts, the camera dwelling on the detail. It’s in moments like this that
the idiosyncrasies of nineteenth-century life feel more vivid — just as in The Beguiled, which I reviewed recently.
Overall the episode does a good
job of drawing viewers in, letting Atwood’s first person prose work its magic.
The subject of a murderess is a fascinating one for us, as it was for Victorians, and the fact that the show is based on a true story (a double
murder in 1843) seems designed to appeal to those devouring crime documentaries
on Netflix, as much as those with an interest in the period. I’ll be watching,
if not bingeing, the rest.
 |
| Sarah Gadon as Grace in Alias Grace (2017) |
Did you watch the first episode
of Alias Grace? What did you think? Let me know — here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
No comments:
Post a Comment