Lady in the Lake Treads Shallow Waters

As a longtime fan of Laura Lippman’s “Lady in the Lake,” I approached this HBO series with great anticipation, expecting a faithful adaptation that would deepen my connection to Maddie and Cleo’s stories. But after watching all eight episodes, I can’t help but feel disappointed and even disillusioned by the way Har’el and her team have flattened the complex characters and nuanced themes of Lippman’s novel.

In simpler terms, a narrative can be large in terms of its scope and complexity, or it can be significant in its themes and meaning. For instance, “Lady in the Lake” by Laura Lippman is a narratively big story due to its intricate plot involving murders in 1960s Baltimore and the characters’ interconnected lives. The author skillfully balances their freedom to act and external forces shaping their actions. However, Apple TV+’s adaptation misses this balance. By removing the novel’s rich details and replacing them with a heavy focus on systemic discrimination as the sole cause of character motivations, the story becomes both overloaded and oversimplified, ultimately drowning in sanctimony rather than allowing the narrative to naturally unfold.

Alma Har’el’s miniseries adapts key storylines from Lippman’s 2019 novel with some differences. The character of Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish homemaker, decides to leave her husband and stumbands upon the body of an 11-year-old girl named Tessie in unexpected ways. This discovery reignites Maddie’s dormant teenage writing aspirations, leading her to apply for a job at the local paper. However, her male colleagues hinder her progress. While working on the newspaper’s help line, she assists in uncovering another corpse – that of Cleo Johnson, a missing Black woman whose body is discovered in a city lake. Maddie becomes determined to solve Cleo’s case despite opposition from her editors who show little interest and her secret lover, a Black police officer, who fears the repercussions.

Expecting a TV adaptation of “Lady in the Lake” to perfectly replicate every detail from Lippman’s book, including its unique narrative style that combines third-person and first-person perspectives, is unrealistic. The television version has been significantly altered, resulting in a loss of essential elements. These elements include the exploration of the complex relationships between the female characters and their negotiations of male attention, as well as the portrayal of Baltimore as a city with intricate, interconnected histories. Lippman’s novels frequently take place in Baltimore, where she resides after working as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun for many years. The series’ conclusion also fails to maintain the novel’s thoughtful examination of journalism as a double-edged profession.

Har’el, who wrote the scripts for three episodes and directed all seven, narrows down the story’s scope through an excessive number of coincidences, shifting it from a mystery to a sermon. In this adaptation of “Lady in the Lake,” the focus on injustice overshadows the characters’ intimacy, hampering Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram’s central performances. Cleo undergoes significant changes; she transforms from a lively sex worker who leaves her children with her parents to pursue new love into a weary woman trying to save her marriage while fighting against her community’s drug and gambling addiction. Ingram skillfully portrays the character’s altered priorities with both firm determination and tender compassion, but the substantial reduction in Cleo’s ghostly narrative from the novel significantly lessens her animosity towards Maddie for exploiting her death for content and weakens a crucial suspense element. Portman delivers a poignant and unpredictable acting style, echoing her exceptional work in “Jackie,” but her performance as Maddie becomes predictable due to her reliance on increasingly emotional outbursts that don’t align with the character’s inner emotions. (Portman’s inconsistent Baltimore accent is also a distraction.)

In simpler terms, the TV adaptation of “Lady in the Lake” simplifies the complex inter-community tensions portrayed in the original novel. The show emphasizes discrimination against Jews and Blacks in Baltimore, but it lacks depth in showing how each community harbors prejudices towards one another. Some elements from the book have been altered, such as removing an incident where Maddie’s husband discriminates against a Black character named Cleo, and adding a scene where he praises Black people for standing up to racists. The portrayal of the Black crime lord Shell Gordon is also more exaggerated, with him having more power and influence. While there are more Black characters in the series, they often play stereotypical roles as gangsters or superstitious individuals. To make Cleo into a crusader, the show seems to portray the Black community as overly susceptible to superstition and immoral behavior, which is an unfair representation.

Har’el’s production “Lady in the Lake” is her longest and most complex work yet, but the extra length doesn’t seem to enhance the story. Each episode lacks clear starting and ending points, making the characters’ transformations unclear, and the narrative feels chaotic as it jumps between subplots while the overall pace is slow. The plot progresses erratically, with Har’el prioritizing visual oddities over substance. The series opens with a Thanksgiving parade, allowing for an overwhelming display of grotesque puppets attacking the camera. A brief section in the novel about the suspected killer’s military past is expanded into a shallow imitation of “Manchurian Candidate,” adding little more than an explicit depiction of mental deterioration. Har’el immerses viewers in Maddie and Cleo’s dreams, showing them clutching lambs, wandering under laundry lines, and wading through aquarium water. In a particularly uncomfortable scene, they dance to a jazzy rendition of “Go Down Moses” in a choreographed routine.

In a refreshing change from the show’s predictable interior sets and staged portrayal of Baltimore’s nightlife, this intermittent strange feeling offers an intriguing contrast. However, it also underscores how underdeveloped Maddie and Cleo are as characters, often reduced to stereotypical female imagery. The bizarre sequence of Maddie cleaning, dusting, and lying beneath her husband is intended to express her unhappiness with marriage and its unequal domestic chores. However, the series struggles to convey Maddie’s inner thoughts effectively, which Lippman captured so brilliantly with her witty and poignant writing: her revelations of personal contradictions, her understanding of when to be called “Mrs.” versus “Ms.”, and her unquenchable longing for something more. These subtle nuances in how people perceive their lives are lost amidst the show’s insistent focus on the political implications of our actions. While it’s true that our personal lives are shaped by larger societal issues, repetitively driving this point home without equally rich character development results in monotonous storytelling.

In simpler terms, the main issue with “Lady in the Lake” is its portrayal of women’s value being tied only to their suffering. Cleo seeks revenge for her loved ones and fights for Black women’s rights, while Maddie endures sexism and racism at work. Even the character of Tessie is reduced to a mere prop for the narrative, denying her individual desires and purpose. The story’s emphasis on female suffering overshadows the complexities of these characters, including their self-interests and competition with other women. By eliminating these aspects, “Lady in the Lake” misses an opportunity to critically examine the societal expectations placed upon women and instead reinforces them.

2024-07-24 22:54

Lady in the Lake Treads Shallow Waters

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