Previously: Episode 1 "Vanish"
Go report somewhere else. Let these people be"
by Nathaniel R
Team Experience has decided to pass the baton each week on Sharp Objects for different perspectives / takes on the show. Two episodes in I think that seems fitting. While the show is focused on one woman's perspective, albeit not in a first-person narrative way, its shard-like editing is disorientingly multiple in feeling, as if Camille (Amy Adams) can't shake any of her past selves but also can't just be in any moment with herself. The communal self, the incestuously local population of depressed sweaty Wind Gap, Missouri, isn't any easier for her.
The second episode "Dirt" revolves around the funeral of Natalie Keene, a young girl murdered by an unknown killer. Detective Willis (from Kansas City... and our dreams) fears it's a serial situation given a similar early crime in Wind Gap. Willis and Camille do their own individual digging while Adora (Patricia Clarkson) continually bristles at her daughter Camille's reporting...
Two episodes in Adora makes little sense, though I can't take my eyes off of Patty (no surprise there), and her bristling could be comic, with just a half inch tonal shift. How insane to think that reporting and detective work on a crime is more disruptive to a community than serial killing! That's some batshit next level 'don't rock the boat' conformity.
Camille wonders how Adora knew the dead girls so well. In one of Clarkson's best line readings, dripping with exhausted condescencion, as if her grown daughter is a small child, who has been tugging at her clothes asking the same question again and again.
Camille, I'm very involved in our community. It's our family's duty.
Sharp Objects is good at atmosphere. We get a good sense of the heat, the people watching each other, the local haunts. We understand quickly much they value conformity which shows up in all sorts of ways including kneejerk homophobia (the dead girl's brother is assumed to be queer), and suspicion of outsiders. One of the most intriguing touches, a welcome regressed mirror of Camille's own adolescent discomfort with her stifling home town, are the small rebellions of the local teenage girls. They steal flowers from the tribute sites. They rollerskate into stores. They even make jokes about the killing. This last bit is too much for Camille. She reminds them that young girls are being targeted. The retort is both juvenile and authentic "not the cool ones."
Atmosphere: check. Storytelling: TBD. Two episodes in, I have to confess: I'm not sure I like Sharp Objects. With its perpetual scenes of Camille driving accompanied by a constant and self-consciously eclectic mix tape of a soundtrack it recalls Big Little Lies, also a murder mystery of sorts, without that shows buoyant wit and endearing female camarederie. It's meth-addled Southern grimness recalls True Detective without that show's dizzying philosophizing or labyrinthine plotting. Mostly it appears to be biding its time, in no rush to get anywhere, either content in observational character-portraits (and we've already had two full hours of unsubtle take on Camille's alcoholism and self-harm) or unable to access 8 hours worth of story.
But rather than grouse I leave you with a few stray observations:
Jackie -- Inside voice. It's a funeral.
FAVORITE SCENE: The funeral. Please filmmakers, give us two-shots and three-shots all the time. Seeing multiple actors performing in a single frame is always a thrill and all too rare. This is a way film doesn't have to be inferior to the stage but often chooses to be with its endless shot-reverse shot closeups, a refusal to let actors act together . This scene is so inappropriately funny and also upsetting. And Adora and Camille's battle over the note-taking is riveting actorly 'business'
THE DOLLHOUSE. Hereditary has ruined me on dollhouses. I keep expecting the dollhouse to have horrific reflections of the serial killing plot at any moment. But for now it's just a dollhouse, albeit a narcissistic one, the Crellin household in miniature.
WHO DAT? Who is this guy staring at Camille and we should note that for further plot points we assume?
THE MAID. Get Out has ruined me on smiling subservient smiling black housekeepers in grey maid outfits. I keep expecting her to have a killer "no no no no no no no no" moment. But I do love the uncomfortable bit when Adora offers to cut Camille's apple for her only to hand it to the maid.
CHRIS MESSINA. He looks lonely. Can we take him home to comfort him? Please? Why is Chris Messina so dreamy and also: why isn't he in more things? Perhaps filmmakers don't realize how sexy he is since he is not traditionally leading man handsome? [Sudden realization while typing up this paragraph: OH RIGHT. MESSINA WAS ALSO PAIRED WITH ADAMS IN JULIE & JULIA. They're a good match onscreen.]
THE ADULT MEAN GIRLS SCENE. That was a little broad, wasn't it?
ADORA'S MICRO AND MACRO AGRESSIONS. The nonaffectionate relationship between Camille and Adora in flashback (that funeral memory of Adora rejecting Camille's attempts to comfort her. Ouch!) and in present tense (Camille brushing her own face with Adora's discarded fake eyelash. Ouch my heart again!) is already the most potent aspect of the series and I hope -- I haven't read the book -- that it's the meat of the thing in the end. Because otherwise who needs one more mystery about dead girls?