Mare of Easttown
HBO
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Crime shows remain ever popular, relevant, engaging and digestible precisely because of the ready mix between entertainment value and social commentary, between the pliability of the genre and how it adapts in worthy hands to the zeitgeist and particular concerns and anxieties of the time; the combination of elements, from the gruesome and gory to the intellectual and philosophical, from the darkly humorous to the deadly serious, remains an irresistible prospect for creatives and fans alike. Where else can you find that particular kind of immersive escapism, with all the intriguing contradictions that idea implies?
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A decade after gracing the small screen on HBO’s Mildred Pierce, Kate Winslet returns with the superb Mare of Easttown. A run of seven episodes confirms her status as one of the best actresses working today. At the age of 45, she hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of her potential, yet this deceptively complex crime series – incorporating elements of the police procedural, the family drama/saga and the thriller – works as an ongoing highlights reel for her incredible talent, much like Hulu’s The handmaid’s tale does for Elisabeth Moss, albeit on a much grander scale.
Crime shows remain ever popular, relevant, engaging and digestible precisely because of the ready mix between entertainment value and social commentary, between the pliability of the genre and how it adapts in worthy hands to the zeitgeist and particular concerns and anxieties of the time; the combination of elements, from the gruesome and gory to the intellectual and philosophical, from the darkly humorous to the deadly serious, remains an irresistible prospect for creatives and fans alike. Where else can you find that particular kind of immersive escapism, with all the intriguing contradictions that idea implies?
Three cheers for the recent rise in mainstream crime fiction television of the female protagonist: Broadchurch, The killing, Babylon Berlin, Happy valley, Marcella, Ozark and Top of the lake are all excellent in their own right – compulsively watchable, fascinating series narratives that put the female protagonist front and centre.
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The theme of family is often central to the crime story. The Sopranos, Breaking bad, Ozark and many more reveal how the intersection between criminality and family, crime and social ills, becomes a useful lens through which to investigate a number of relationships, including how the dynamics of the family and extended family become a microcosm of greater unsettlements and uncertainties, moments of flux and change, at the community, city and countrywide levels.
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The theme of family is often central to the crime story. The Sopranos, Breaking bad, Ozark and many more reveal how the intersection between criminality and family, crime and social ills, becomes a useful lens through which to investigate a number of relationships, including how the dynamics of the family and extended family become a microcosm of greater unsettlements and uncertainties, moments of flux and change, at the community, city and countrywide levels. Particularly compelling is the tension inherent in the kind of storytelling that has grown immensely popular in recent years – between the long-form demands of the family saga, the drama, the extended character study and the demands of the crime and murder story, where action, suspense, thrills and chills are part and parcel. This tension between the slow-burning intricacies and the visceral immediacy of the chase and investigation often makes for genuinely compelling, if potentially overwrought, viewing.
Mystery requires answers, conclusions, clarity and illumination; the family drama thrives on opacity, nuance, open-endedness and a great variety of potential emotional responses and affect from the audience. When a crime show manages to grip its audience and sustain an active interest through the satisfaction of both sets of requirements – or goes a way towards doing so – the result can be memorable and profound.
In Mare of Easttown, Mare Sheehan must investigate the death of teenage mother Erin (Cailee Spaeny) after a party in the nearby woods. Her uncanny instincts and familiarity with the community means that she is adept at her job – while all but neutral or unbiased. She’s paired with a young detective from out of town, Colin Zabel (Evan Peters), who is no mug himself but certainly an outsider unfamiliar with the complex dynamics at play in Easttown. Mare has her own complex sense of justice, of right and wrong; viewers will be fascinated to note the difference in response when dealing, early on, with two transgressors: a drug addict burglary suspect, and someone caught on video beating a murder victim, are treated very differently when the moment comes to arrest them. Mare, thus, is anything but impartial, anything but an instrument of state power unencumbered by community pressures. Mare is tough, yet kind; merciful, yet unforgiving; fully immersed in her work, yet mentally occupied with a great number of traumas and conflicts, both in the past and in the present and ongoing.
Mare’s high school friend Dawn is still searching for answers a year after the disappearance of her drug-addicted daughter, 19-year-old Katy Bailey; Erin is found dead after a party in the woods, one attended by a variety of the town’s young people, including Mare’s daughter, Siobhan. You can image the town anguish in a closely knit but troubled community when a murdered girl adds to the tragedy of the disappearance of Katy Bailey.
As outsider, Colin Zabel’s character is useful in illuminating the limitations of small town policing, while providing a different perspective for Mare to tap into. The show treads somewhat unsteady ground in the relationship between Mare and her fellow detective, but there’s no denying how powerful the tragic involvement of the young investigator is in the greater scheme of things, particularly related to the show’s thematic concerns.
This show is crammed to the rafters with narrative threads – thankfully all engaging, at the very least – and includes the obligatory love interest, Richard Ryan (a charming and lovely Guy Pearce), a writer and guest lecturer who has a winning rapport with Mare but who is also somewhat underutilised. Then there are the exploits of Siobhan, Mare’s schoolgirl musician daughter who keeps her sexuality hidden from her mother and is busy with a sensitive project of her own; and Frank, Mare’s ex-husband, who gets engaged to his girlfriend but who might have known the murdered Erin just a little too well.
Fans of recent HBO literary mystery adaptations such as Big little lies, Sharp objects and The undoing will be riveted, while the show also shares its deep concern with character arcs and the slow burn of another HBO cracker, The night of. Fans of HBO’s The affair, with its extensive, wide lens focus on intergenerational trauma and the fraught, intimate relationships between parents and daughters, will find much to admire here.
Genre fans will be quick to point out the echoes between Mare and the Dennis Lehane mysteries Mystic river and Gone baby gone: the sense of place and thick feel of authenticity is undeniable. All through the seven episodes of this self-contained series is the sense that the disappearance or murder of a child or children not only changes individuals and families, but alters entire communities forever; the sense of a before and an after is less important than the unshakeable sense that the everyday fabric, the threads and ties that bind, are fraying and coming apart. What happens to community, to trust, to rituals of togetherness, when communal trauma shatters the fragile ecosystem of a relatively poor community trying to survive?
Mare Sheehan obsesses over the case of the missing girl. Crucial to the core of the show is the fact that Mare is dealing with her own massive loss, the fact that her own son went off the rails and committed suicide not too long ago, and the fact that she is a grandmother and guardian to her grandson. She fears that the young boy, DJ, might be troubled with a similar neurological affliction to that of her son, while there is a prolonged custody battle that looms in the form of the boy’s mother, an ex-addict, now determined to make a home for her son. Mare lives with her mother, her daughter and her grandson, and her ex-husband lives just around the corner.
Parallel to Mare’s own domestic dramas is the curious case of Erin McMenamin. Young, struggling to cope financially, but clearly a good mother to her son, she needs to find a way to raise money for the ear surgery he so desperately needs. The father and his girlfriend have very little time for her, while her own father complains about the costs of his grandson to the family. What is Erin to do? And is the murder of Erin connected in any way to the disappearance of Katy a year prior? Most puzzling of all: what role does Deacon Mark, who received a distressed call from Erin a short while before she died, have to do with it all? Expect Mare’s best friend Lori, Lori’s husband John and his brother Billy, the Ross children Moira and Ryan, and a number of other supporting characters all to contribute to an extremely dense, never-less-than-entirely-gripping, sometimes convoluted, ultimately cathartic viewing experience.
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Setting is key to crime fiction, both in print and, especially, on screen. Setting informs and even directs story and plot. The scene of the crime, in the broad, metaphysical sense, matters.
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Setting is key to crime fiction, both in print and, especially, on screen. Setting informs and even directs story and plot. The scene of the crime, in the broad, metaphysical sense, matters. Think of the unrelenting, brooding atmosphere and portentous cold of Nordic noir, or the atmosphere on recent female-led shows: Broadchurch, with its relentless crashing of the waves and tangible, concealed threats; Top of the lake, with its moody mountains and sense of forbidding and isolation; and the all-enveloping sweatiness and treacle-thick layers of mood and menace and oppressive heat and humidity of Sharp objects.
Mare of Easttown immediately establishes its focus on space and place, its first shots establishing the Easttown, Delaware (southern Pennsylvania) location with its sombre, grey sky, lapping wind and tiny houses with paint peeling cramped together. In stark contrast to Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy, which, despite its best intentions, felt contrived and awfully deliberate in its broad stroke depiction of rural, neglected America, this feels very different. Intimate, unshowy, unspectacular, real.
Easttown is a place of suffering. A setting where people get by rather than thrive. A place of poverty, of neglect, of hard-earned but minor victories, of occasional triumphs and regular heartbreaks. Where family means everything, but nuclear families are everything but average. A place that might not know murder all too well, but one where petty crime, various addictions and crimes of passion run rampant. A veritable drop in the ocean, east of Eden, where the collars are blue and the tempers are quick to flare.
Photo credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_of_Easttown#/media/File:Mare_of_Easttown_2021_Television_Series_poster.png
The pilot is a masterclass in sure-footed, secure storytelling, anchored in small, intimate moments and plot movements which reveal an immense amount about the characters, often with minimal dialogue but maximum emotional heft. Whether it’s watching a desperate sister rallying some deeply submerged strength to deal once more with her convict brother, or watching a scene from Mare’s perspective unfold as the news about Erin’s death is shared with her distraught father – Mare of Easttown never lacks in compelling, scene-stealing performances.
From what I gather, I was somewhat in the minority when it came to figuring out the identity of Erin’s killer. You do get the sense that despite the undeniable gravitas of the finale – where a variety of full-circle moments do end up playing out – all of the various subplots aren’t quite satisfactorily resolved, in hindsight.
The Mare and Richard relationship, in particular, could have been executed better. The sixth episode and finale spend too much time anticipating the inevitable showdown and big reveal (which is actually virtually broadcast to the viewer in neon signage, if you pay close attention). The closing tracking shot (highly symbolic and suggestive) lingers for just five seconds too long. It’s as if the showrunners didn’t quite trust the viewer to draw the inevitable, singular conclusion.
Still, on balance, despite a few red herrings (Red Merrings? No? OK.) too many, some less than altogether confident scenes involving teenage characters and their digital communication, and a major plot thread involving a certain detective which feels too neat and deliberate in the shock value of its outcomes, there is a tremendous amount here to like, to appreciate, to admire and to celebrate, even. Ultimately, this is a show – often understated, gritty and quietly gloomy, yet very real – which, despite its bleak “busyness”, is about its titular character and (anti-)heroine, the place of Easttown and the fragile bonds between desperate, spiritually seeking people living in a fractious community.
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Where do you hide, and where do you seek a form of solace, in such an unforgiving yet unexceptional place? Secrets and lies, truth and deception, masks, facades and brave faces commingle in Easttown; women are often the ones to suffer in silence and keep things afloat, while the men eventually break down, crushed by the weight of their poor decisions and lack of prospects.
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Where do you hide, and where do you seek a form of solace, in such an unforgiving yet unexceptional place? Secrets and lies, truth and deception, masks, facades and brave faces commingle in Easttown; women are often the ones to suffer in silence and keep things afloat, while the men eventually break down, crushed by the weight of their poor decisions and lack of prospects. The blind spots, fault lines, weaknesses and marks of woe are worn in the bodies and on the dour faces of all and sundry, but these never feel like gross and improper exaggerations of a fundamental truth: sometimes living can feel an awful lot like dying.
We are reminded, again and again, how we are vulnerable to forces greater than ourselves. We are exposed to dysfunction and despair. Especially in these times, not everyone gets to have the happy ending; not everyone gets to feel the sun on their back. Ever. Mare is the town of Easttown; Easttown is Mare. She can never truly leave, and they can never truly let her go.
As titular character, Mare is a walking contradiction, a fracture of a human being (she incidentally limps in much of the pilot), gloriously unbothered, tough, tender, traumatised, and terrifically realised and embodied by the always game Kate Winslet. Beautiful but unglamorous with her flannel and visible regrowth, she is a relatable, flawed, principled yet compromised human being. Some might undervalue the naturalism of Frances McDormand in Best Picture winner Nomadland, but there is something to be said for the ways in which that extraordinary performance – and no, it doesn’t just come naturally to actors to embody characters – echoes in Winslet’s Mare of Easttown.
How both film and series arrive at a moment deeply unsettled globally, and deliberately pivot on the quiet celebration of female strength and agency, is not unimportant.
Winslet nails the notoriously difficult regional accent. She brings a tough physicality to the role. She is a stoic, a realist and a pragmatist, but also vulnerable and kind. Enduring despite misery and misfortune, she crosses the line, wilfully, in doing what she believes will secure the right outcome, while she carries the compounded weight of loss and grief like the Sisyphus of Easttown.
When all you have known in your life is loss, loving with all you have inside you is unavoidable, this series seems to say. Mare’s journey would have been too much for a lesser actress to carry with aplomb, but Winslet immerses herself so fully that you often forget that you’re watching a performance. Winslet makes doubly sure Mare is a fully formed person, so necessary in a context where the gloomy setting and grim plot machinations could see things devolving into less than stellar melodrama very, very quickly. Things remain messy, like real life, and stripped bare, unsentimental.
At times, the pain and sorrow of the characters are evoked so acutely that you’ll find yourself tearful. At other times, you’ll simply be mesmerised by multilayered, moreish performances, big, tasty and heartfelt. The betrayals, the revelations, the big moments, the dissolution of relationships and the forging of new ties feel raw – and real.
Mercy, compassion, grace and forgiveness are all part of life, and so it is in Mare of Easttown. The family or domestic drama, predicated on the slow, unhurried passing of time, somehow manages to retain its integrity and shape as it is welded to the requirements of the murder mystery. Occasionally, you can feel the creak and the buckle, but for the most part you’ll be unable to tear yourself away.
How the mistakes and missteps of the older generations reverberate and the consequences are visited upon the younger generations is by nature rather heady and intense, yet the line between compulsively watchable and heavy-handed is often thin. Luckily, these characters are in safe hands. A study in grief and mourning, a simple whodunnit this is not.
Winslet – world-weary but still so beautiful – is also often hilarious as she offhand lands sour, acerbic barbs. The character sucks on an e-cigarette (remember the running gag on the second season of True detective?) and has a love for beer and junk food (don’t we all?), mixed with an unbelievably moving dedication to duty and to love her family, no matter what. She is equal parts stubborn and sensitive, drudge and dynamite, as browbeaten as she is resilient. Mare really isn’t a grouch or a bitch; she just literally doesn’t have the energy to deal with your shit.
Twenty-five years ago, she did something which stands as remarkable in the lore of the small town: she made a basketball shot that won the state championship. Cue to the present: after she overreaches and is duly humbled, Mare’s mandated therapy sessions, where she must explore her trauma after the suicide of her son, never become a vehicle for hysteria or any overacting.
There is a cumulative sense of agency and power to this carefully calibrated performance. As a daughter, she has a complex but loving relationship with her mother, Helen (who only calls Mare by her full name of Maryanne a handful of times on the show). The pair can be rather vicious in the way that you can only be with those whom you know will always have your back. As Mare’s mother, Jean Smart is magnificent, and nothing less. Along with Melissa Leo, Smart is outstanding at playing the tough matriarch with the heart of gold. Smart steals almost every scene she’s in, going toe to toe with Winslet. In one particularly memorable scene, she falls off her chair cackling; in another, she comforts her daughter in a way that only a mother could. Come awards season, Winslet and Smart should be at the front of the pack.
Despite these firm anchors, Mare of Easttown, while avoiding any kind of poverty porn and being deeply compassionate in the myriad ways that it explores female relationships and inner strength, is occasionally guilty of the lurid, pornographic violence against women that we’ve seen all too often in countless other crime dramas. In a show that prides itself on being smart and subtle and having a functional underpinning of the various elements of its story and plot, there is little justification for gratuitous shots of the naked Erin or of sex workers who strip for clients. These moments are jarring and genuinely out of place, but we’ve become so conditioned to their ubiquity that you might not even pick them up or feel consciously bothered by them. Yet, they appear – like a distracting prop in the corner of the room – and represent a small crack in the facade of an otherwise impressive, convincing set of visual representations. The shots, styling and score are all uniformly well-executed and fitting.
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More than just a showcase for the sustained brilliance of Winslet and Smart, Mare of Easttown represents the best of a new trend in bingeworthy, intelligent television: the juggernaut of the female-led, self-contained, single series universe.
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More than just a showcase for the sustained brilliance of Winslet and Smart, Mare of Easttown represents the best of a new trend in bingeworthy, intelligent television: the juggernaut of the female-led, self-contained, single series universe. One where place matters, where the mysteries are manifold yet grounded in realism, and where the viewer becomes thoroughly invested in the outcome of proceedings. The stakes are high. The small screen is where it’s at.
Kommentaar
Brilliant piece!