I'd s/o to whoever just posted about it except I can't remember your username, sorry 'skier!
oh there it is. goo
Thanks for this! Great read, and it's good examination of the documentary. As I'm still new to the true-crime genre, most of this can be hard to recognize. The one thing that struck me and was briefly mentioned in this article is the almost dehumanization of Teresa Halbach. There are few clips and photos that introduce us to her. In the documentary, she is another tool in the machine that put Steven Avery in jail. We feel anger towards her brother for accepting the prosecution, and are rarely reminded of the tragedy he is suffering. Wow. This article was pretty sobering... I feel gross about having wanted to discuss the documentary.
Have you seen The Thin Blue Line? If not, do. That's true crime documentary at its best. Errol Morris most certainly had a pov there, too, but it doesn't cloud his judgement. It got its subject, Randall Adams, released from death row, only for Adams to turn around and sue Morris for profiting off his name. What a fantastic movie.
Don't feel gross. Wanting to talk about it is perfectly normal and most people don't recognize the slant that Making a Murderer comes in with. That's why it's controversial, I think - most people just swallow the whole thing as a journalistic investigation and reach the conclusions they've been spoon-fed. I won't say that the standards of The Jinx are higher - they aren't. Andrew Jarecki directed a movie that's basically "Robert Durst is guilty" and then Robert Durst said "hey, loved the movie, come do a documentary on me" so he did... with the intent to send the dude to jail. What's important is that this is never unclear. It's completely transparent. You go into it on the assumption that Robert Durst has committed multiple murders and gotten away with it through sheer force of money and that you will be educated about how that process worked, and you do. You go into it on the assumption that the filmmakers want nothing more in the world than to hoist Durst on his own petard, and they never deviate. There is no attempt by the filmmakers to mask their agenda, and they got a lot more cooperation because of it - Durst's former lawyers appear on camera, victims' families appear on camera, former employees appear on camera, but the Dursts themselves, some of which have restraining orders against Robert Durst, want no part of it and you're not at all surprised.