What must David Mamet think of The Decameron, Netflix’s laughless comedy of medieval prurience and plague? In the 1990s, long before his turn as a conservative provocateur, the dramatist was famous in iconoclastic circles for his condemnation of modern acting, with its endless “funny voices.” Yet strained artificiality is the new production’s primary mode, not least in the performance of Mamet fille, Zosia, formerly co-star of HBO’s Girls. An exceptionally loose adaptation of Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece, the show is a veritable feast of screeches, squeals, gasps, and unlikely accents. If the high priest of “just say the line” directing has a kind word for his daughter’s recent project, I can’t imagine what it is. 

Is pop-Freudianism an odd beginning for a television review? I suppose so. It is a mark of how little The Decameron offers, however, that the critic is reduced to speculative family counseling. Not so much anchored by the young Mamet’s performance as dragged by it to the sea floor, Netflix’s latest is a disaster not only of casting but of form and style as well. Set in bubonic Italia, 1348, the series is Monty Python without the guffaws and Bridgerton without the sizzle. If pressed, I would concede that the costumes are interesting. Beyond that, the show is so pestilentially stupid that I left it to die in the street after three episodes. 

Like its literary progenitor, The Decameron follows Florentine noblepersons to a country villa, where our heroes hope to wait out the Black Death in style. Unlike that source material, the series produces abundant dialogue in the “Yeah, no, you’re right” vein, seemingly laboring under the delusion that anachronisms must be funny. (“F*** yeah, signora,” declares some poor bastard halfway through the pilot.) Among the production’s other attempts at humor are catfights, insults of the “mouth-breather” variety, and visual gags involving, e.g., a character’s perfume allergy. Dare I say these jokes don’t land? Indeed, The Decameron plays more than anything like an economic experiment on the part of its host platform. What is the minimum amount of talent, effort, and money that can be exploited to produce eight new hours of streaming content? 

The show stars Zosia Mamet as Pampinea, a not-entirely-fresh aristocrat on the verge of a favorable marriage. Unbeknownst to our protagonist, her intended, Leonardo, has succumbed to the plague, leaving his scheming servants to run his manor. When, in a move that recalls the stock plots of commedia dell’arte, these underlings announce that Leonardo is merely traveling, Pampinea hits upon an idea. If she can persuade her fellow refugees that the wedding has already taken place, the estate, and safety, will be hers. 

If The Decameron is not quite an inheritance saga, many of its players nevertheless have pecuniary motives. Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) is Leonardo’s formal heir and wants the estate despite his crippling hypochondria. Licisca (Tanya Reynolds), a penniless maid, has begun to impersonate her mistress (Jessica Plummer) after pushing the latter off a bridge. For those ensemblists ungoverned by money, carnality provides a handy substitute. Both Neifile (Lou Gala) and her husband (Karan Gill) lust after Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), Tindaro’s attendant physician and friend. Dioneo himself wants Licisca, whether or not she is who she claims to be. 

Though the faces in question are memorable enough, the viewer is unlikely to keep these names straight. Neither is he liable to experience any cast member as more than a one-note caricature. In part, this is due to The Decameron’s incurable silliness, which prevents our taking seriously any given fear or desire. Yet it is also true that the performances on display are simply bad. God’s own model of ironic detachment, Zosia Mamet is woefully out of place as a 14th-century anything. (One is reminded of Cynthia Nixon’s disastrous work in HBO’s The Gilded Age.) Other actors appear barely to be trying, having been instructed, one assumes, to aim for petulant shrillness above all. It is at this point that the critic typically reaches for an exception, if only to prove himself unbiased. There aren’t any. Unwatchably lazy and brainless, The Decameron isn’t even almost entertaining. It’s just a sad, unengaging dud. 

The show is, if television executives know what’s good for them, one of the last outings of its kind. Ever since Hamilton blew the doors off American theaters in 2015, showrunners have been sprinting to create the latest in race-blind historical programming. That trend is now exhausted. The problem isn’t, let us be clear, the presence of minority actors in “white” roles. It’s that unlikely casting decisions have tended to inspire far less successful distortions. Thus is Hulu’s The Great a target-free “satire” rather than the perfectly functional costume drama it might have been. Thus have recent Bridgerton seasons been shameless exercises in progressive fan service. To be sure, the gonzo historical comedy can work: See Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (2018) for proof of concept. Note, however, that that film is 120 minutes long. The Decameron’s minutes add up to more than 400. 

Is length the real problem here? It doesn’t help. Still, I suspect that Netflix’s newest offering would have failed as a six-minute Saturday Night Live skit, never mind a television series of any reasonable span. “Richer by far in coin than in wit,” Boccaccio writes of one of The Decameron’s many characters. How well he understood the world. Nearly 700 years later, the series he inspired may make a dollar or two for someone, but it doesn’t deserve to. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.

2024-08-16 08:20:00, http://s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fpremium%2F3118197%2Fa-pox-on-netflixs-plague-comedy%2F?w=600&h=450, What must David Mamet think of The Decameron, Netflix’s laughless comedy of medieval prurience and plague? In the 1990s, long before his turn as a conservative provocateur, the dramatist was famous in iconoclastic circles for his condemnation of modern acting, with its endless “funny voices.” Yet strained artificiality is the new production’s primary mode, not,

What must David Mamet think of The Decameron, Netflix’s laughless comedy of medieval prurience and plague? In the 1990s, long before his turn as a conservative provocateur, the dramatist was famous in iconoclastic circles for his condemnation of modern acting, with its endless “funny voices.” Yet strained artificiality is the new production’s primary mode, not least in the performance of Mamet fille, Zosia, formerly co-star of HBO’s Girls. An exceptionally loose adaptation of Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece, the show is a veritable feast of screeches, squeals, gasps, and unlikely accents. If the high priest of “just say the line” directing has a kind word for his daughter’s recent project, I can’t imagine what it is. 

Is pop-Freudianism an odd beginning for a television review? I suppose so. It is a mark of how little The Decameron offers, however, that the critic is reduced to speculative family counseling. Not so much anchored by the young Mamet’s performance as dragged by it to the sea floor, Netflix’s latest is a disaster not only of casting but of form and style as well. Set in bubonic Italia, 1348, the series is Monty Python without the guffaws and Bridgerton without the sizzle. If pressed, I would concede that the costumes are interesting. Beyond that, the show is so pestilentially stupid that I left it to die in the street after three episodes. 

Like its literary progenitor, The Decameron follows Florentine noblepersons to a country villa, where our heroes hope to wait out the Black Death in style. Unlike that source material, the series produces abundant dialogue in the “Yeah, no, you’re right” vein, seemingly laboring under the delusion that anachronisms must be funny. (“F*** yeah, signora,” declares some poor bastard halfway through the pilot.) Among the production’s other attempts at humor are catfights, insults of the “mouth-breather” variety, and visual gags involving, e.g., a character’s perfume allergy. Dare I say these jokes don’t land? Indeed, The Decameron plays more than anything like an economic experiment on the part of its host platform. What is the minimum amount of talent, effort, and money that can be exploited to produce eight new hours of streaming content? 

The show stars Zosia Mamet as Pampinea, a not-entirely-fresh aristocrat on the verge of a favorable marriage. Unbeknownst to our protagonist, her intended, Leonardo, has succumbed to the plague, leaving his scheming servants to run his manor. When, in a move that recalls the stock plots of commedia dell’arte, these underlings announce that Leonardo is merely traveling, Pampinea hits upon an idea. If she can persuade her fellow refugees that the wedding has already taken place, the estate, and safety, will be hers. 

If The Decameron is not quite an inheritance saga, many of its players nevertheless have pecuniary motives. Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) is Leonardo’s formal heir and wants the estate despite his crippling hypochondria. Licisca (Tanya Reynolds), a penniless maid, has begun to impersonate her mistress (Jessica Plummer) after pushing the latter off a bridge. For those ensemblists ungoverned by money, carnality provides a handy substitute. Both Neifile (Lou Gala) and her husband (Karan Gill) lust after Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), Tindaro’s attendant physician and friend. Dioneo himself wants Licisca, whether or not she is who she claims to be. 

Though the faces in question are memorable enough, the viewer is unlikely to keep these names straight. Neither is he liable to experience any cast member as more than a one-note caricature. In part, this is due to The Decameron’s incurable silliness, which prevents our taking seriously any given fear or desire. Yet it is also true that the performances on display are simply bad. God’s own model of ironic detachment, Zosia Mamet is woefully out of place as a 14th-century anything. (One is reminded of Cynthia Nixon’s disastrous work in HBO’s The Gilded Age.) Other actors appear barely to be trying, having been instructed, one assumes, to aim for petulant shrillness above all. It is at this point that the critic typically reaches for an exception, if only to prove himself unbiased. There aren’t any. Unwatchably lazy and brainless, The Decameron isn’t even almost entertaining. It’s just a sad, unengaging dud. 

The show is, if television executives know what’s good for them, one of the last outings of its kind. Ever since Hamilton blew the doors off American theaters in 2015, showrunners have been sprinting to create the latest in race-blind historical programming. That trend is now exhausted. The problem isn’t, let us be clear, the presence of minority actors in “white” roles. It’s that unlikely casting decisions have tended to inspire far less successful distortions. Thus is Hulu’s The Great a target-free “satire” rather than the perfectly functional costume drama it might have been. Thus have recent Bridgerton seasons been shameless exercises in progressive fan service. To be sure, the gonzo historical comedy can work: See Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (2018) for proof of concept. Note, however, that that film is 120 minutes long. The Decameron’s minutes add up to more than 400. 

Is length the real problem here? It doesn’t help. Still, I suspect that Netflix’s newest offering would have failed as a six-minute Saturday Night Live skit, never mind a television series of any reasonable span. “Richer by far in coin than in wit,” Boccaccio writes of one of The Decameron’s many characters. How well he understood the world. Nearly 700 years later, the series he inspired may make a dollar or two for someone, but it doesn’t deserve to. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.

, What must David Mamet think of The Decameron, Netflix’s laughless comedy of medieval prurience and plague? In the 1990s, long before his turn as a conservative provocateur, the dramatist was famous in iconoclastic circles for his condemnation of modern acting, with its endless “funny voices.” Yet strained artificiality is the new production’s primary mode, not least in the performance of Mamet fille, Zosia, formerly co-star of HBO’s Girls. An exceptionally loose adaptation of Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece, the show is a veritable feast of screeches, squeals, gasps, and unlikely accents. If the high priest of “just say the line” directing has a kind word for his daughter’s recent project, I can’t imagine what it is.  Is pop-Freudianism an odd beginning for a television review? I suppose so. It is a mark of how little The Decameron offers, however, that the critic is reduced to speculative family counseling. Not so much anchored by the young Mamet’s performance as dragged by it to the sea floor, Netflix’s latest is a disaster not only of casting but of form and style as well. Set in bubonic Italia, 1348, the series is Monty Python without the guffaws and Bridgerton without the sizzle. If pressed, I would concede that the costumes are interesting. Beyond that, the show is so pestilentially stupid that I left it to die in the street after three episodes.  Zosia Mamet and Saoirse-Monica Jackson in The Decameron. (Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix) Like its literary progenitor, The Decameron follows Florentine noblepersons to a country villa, where our heroes hope to wait out the Black Death in style. Unlike that source material, the series produces abundant dialogue in the “Yeah, no, you’re right” vein, seemingly laboring under the delusion that anachronisms must be funny. (“F*** yeah, signora,” declares some poor bastard halfway through the pilot.) Among the production’s other attempts at humor are catfights, insults of the “mouth-breather” variety, and visual gags involving, e.g., a character’s perfume allergy. Dare I say these jokes don’t land? Indeed, The Decameron plays more than anything like an economic experiment on the part of its host platform. What is the minimum amount of talent, effort, and money that can be exploited to produce eight new hours of streaming content?  The show stars Zosia Mamet as Pampinea, a not-entirely-fresh aristocrat on the verge of a favorable marriage. Unbeknownst to our protagonist, her intended, Leonardo, has succumbed to the plague, leaving his scheming servants to run his manor. When, in a move that recalls the stock plots of commedia dell’arte, these underlings announce that Leonardo is merely traveling, Pampinea hits upon an idea. If she can persuade her fellow refugees that the wedding has already taken place, the estate, and safety, will be hers.  If The Decameron is not quite an inheritance saga, many of its players nevertheless have pecuniary motives. Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) is Leonardo’s formal heir and wants the estate despite his crippling hypochondria. Licisca (Tanya Reynolds), a penniless maid, has begun to impersonate her mistress (Jessica Plummer) after pushing the latter off a bridge. For those ensemblists ungoverned by money, carnality provides a handy substitute. Both Neifile (Lou Gala) and her husband (Karan Gill) lust after Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), Tindaro’s attendant physician and friend. Dioneo himself wants Licisca, whether or not she is who she claims to be.  Though the faces in question are memorable enough, the viewer is unlikely to keep these names straight. Neither is he liable to experience any cast member as more than a one-note caricature. In part, this is due to The Decameron’s incurable silliness, which prevents our taking seriously any given fear or desire. Yet it is also true that the performances on display are simply bad. God’s own model of ironic detachment, Zosia Mamet is woefully out of place as a 14th-century anything. (One is reminded of Cynthia Nixon’s disastrous work in HBO’s The Gilded Age.) Other actors appear barely to be trying, having been instructed, one assumes, to aim for petulant shrillness above all. It is at this point that the critic typically reaches for an exception, if only to prove himself unbiased. There aren’t any. Unwatchably lazy and brainless, The Decameron isn’t even almost entertaining. It’s just a sad, unengaging dud.  The show is, if television executives know what’s good for them, one of the last outings of its kind. Ever since Hamilton blew the doors off American theaters in 2015, showrunners have been sprinting to create the latest in race-blind historical programming. That trend is now exhausted. The problem isn’t, let us be clear, the presence of minority actors in “white” roles. It’s that unlikely casting decisions have tended to inspire far less successful distortions. Thus is Hulu’s The Great a target-free “satire” rather than the perfectly functional costume drama it might have been. Thus have recent Bridgerton seasons been shameless exercises in progressive fan service. To be sure, the gonzo historical comedy can work: See Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (2018) for proof of concept. Note, however, that that film is 120 minutes long. The Decameron’s minutes add up to more than 400.  Is length the real problem here? It doesn’t help. Still, I suspect that Netflix’s newest offering would have failed as a six-minute Saturday Night Live skit, never mind a television series of any reasonable span. “Richer by far in coin than in wit,” Boccaccio writes of one of The Decameron’s many characters. How well he understood the world. Nearly 700 years later, the series he inspired may make a dollar or two for someone, but it doesn’t deserve to.  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer., , , https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/LA.TV_.decameron-082124.webp, Washington Examiner, Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/cropped-favicon-32×32.png, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/feed/, Graham Hillard,

The road is as familiar as it is well traveled. An ingénue enchants us all with her puckish charm. Half a decade later, she strikes it rich with a Marvel/Star Wars project or three. Perhaps the occasional award bait falls into her lap, but, time being what it is, every offer soon begins to look enticing. One minute she’s accepting an Oscar for headlining a Darren Aronofsky masterpiece. The next she’s married to Murray from Stranger Things in a tedious racism-of-the-week miniseries. 

Such is the career arc of Natalie Portman, the early-aughts “it” girl turned edutainment antihero. In her most recent serious project, 2023’s May December, the Israeli American played an actress sucking the metaphorical blood of a Mary Kay Letourneau type she hoped to portray on film. Portman’s latest role is as a housewife-cum-journalist investigating the murder of a black woman in midcentury Baltimore. In both instances, the former starlet’s character exists to critique “white female privilege,” a leftist bugbear that transforms anthropological interest into “harm.” Is it surprising to find a performer of Portman’s fame in such parts? It shouldn’t be. Had the Black Swan star passed, Alicia Vikander or Elizabeth Olsen would surely have come aboard. 

Of course, even a vaguely sad career choice can lead to passable entertainment. Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake certainly tries hard. Based on Laura Lippman’s novel of the same name, the limited series belongs to a flourishing genre of gal-meets-noun productions (The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window) that, while never quite good, are at least evocatively staged. One might expect, given its well-received source material, that Apple’s Lady would rise to that middling standard. Alas, no. A baffling and chaotic affair, the show is as poorly made as any television drama we’re likely to see this year. Moreover, it exposes afresh its lead actress’s long-standing stiltedness on-screen. If Portman wants a future beyond Dior ads, she had better pray that casting directors forget this outing soon. 

The actress plays Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish homemaker and former high school reporter wed to the dull but upstanding Milton (Brett Gelman). When, on the morning of Charm City’s 1966 Christmas parade, an 11-year-old goes missing, Maddie experiences an emotional crisis that sends her fleeing her marriage. Because the young girl in question is not the titular slain “lady,” a secondary plot must run alongside the first. In this storyline, an African American activist named Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) works for the betterment of the black community, even as she hurtles toward the events that will lead, a month later, to her death. 

The practical tethering of these narratives is simple enough: Shattered by the missing child’s death, Maddie begins digging into Cleo’s. Their thematic connection, however, is what really counts. Both of our heroines are reckless strivers, increasingly desperate to break the shackles of sex and circumstance. In Maddie’s case, this means putting aside traditional values in the name of self-actualization. (In addition to leaving her husband, Portman’s character abandons a son and commences an affair.) Cleo, meanwhile, runs up against a different set of rules. To make ends meet, she must work for unrepentant gangster Shell Gordon (The Wire’s Wood Harris). Yet doing so disqualifies her for a place in an activist community that must, given the era, maintain appearances. 

Had Lady in the Lake been filmed 15 years ago, it might have been a straightforward liberation parable in the style of The Hours (2002), Stephen Daldry’s feminist fantasia in multiple keys. Since this is 2024, a darker ideology gets its say. Peppering the show’s action is an ill-designed voiceover track in which a dead Cleo scolds Maddie for caring about her murder. (“You came at the end of my story and turned it into your beginning.”) Six weeks ago in these pages, I reviewed Netflix’s Eric, which condemns white people for failing to notice a black man’s death. Lady in the Lake takes the opposite tack without batting an eye. If one didn’t know better, one might suppose that the point is to bring white viewers under political discipline, not to impose a coherent “antiracist” standard. 

Unlikable characters, ideological complaint: Is there anything Apple’s latest doesn’t offer? One possible answer is a clear sense of what is literally happening on-screen. Another is pacing decisions that make a lick of sense. Among the tricks in creator Alma Har’el’s (Bombay Beach) tool bag are dream sequences and symbols that bleed messily into her characters’ real lives. Frequently presented as montages, these moments are insufficiently distinguishable from what is actually taking place. Perhaps such self-conscious “artfulness” would work if the series weren’t already overstuffed and overlong. It is though. So caught up is Har’el in minor subplots and digressions that the main thrust feels at times like an afterthought. 

Given recent resurgences of the oldest hatred, we should be relieved that an Israeli showrunner can still cast an Israeli actress in a role that emphasizes her Jewishness. It would be a great shame if such productions were tacitly outlawed in Hollywood. As things stand, however, the ignominy belongs to Har’el, Portman, Apple, and everyone else involved in Lady in the Lake’s creation. They got to make the show they wanted, thank God. But it is terrible.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer. 

2024-07-26 02:15:00, http://s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fpremium%2F3096577%2Fnatalie-portmans-latest-project-is-a-crime-psychodrama-combining-cringe-and-cliche%2F?w=600&h=450, The road is as familiar as it is well traveled. An ingénue enchants us all with her puckish charm. Half a decade later, she strikes it rich with a Marvel/Star Wars project or three. Perhaps the occasional award bait falls into her lap, but, time being what it is, every offer soon begins to look,

The road is as familiar as it is well traveled. An ingénue enchants us all with her puckish charm. Half a decade later, she strikes it rich with a Marvel/Star Wars project or three. Perhaps the occasional award bait falls into her lap, but, time being what it is, every offer soon begins to look enticing. One minute she’s accepting an Oscar for headlining a Darren Aronofsky masterpiece. The next she’s married to Murray from Stranger Things in a tedious racism-of-the-week miniseries. 

Such is the career arc of Natalie Portman, the early-aughts “it” girl turned edutainment antihero. In her most recent serious project, 2023’s May December, the Israeli American played an actress sucking the metaphorical blood of a Mary Kay Letourneau type she hoped to portray on film. Portman’s latest role is as a housewife-cum-journalist investigating the murder of a black woman in midcentury Baltimore. In both instances, the former starlet’s character exists to critique “white female privilege,” a leftist bugbear that transforms anthropological interest into “harm.” Is it surprising to find a performer of Portman’s fame in such parts? It shouldn’t be. Had the Black Swan star passed, Alicia Vikander or Elizabeth Olsen would surely have come aboard. 

Of course, even a vaguely sad career choice can lead to passable entertainment. Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake certainly tries hard. Based on Laura Lippman’s novel of the same name, the limited series belongs to a flourishing genre of gal-meets-noun productions (The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window) that, while never quite good, are at least evocatively staged. One might expect, given its well-received source material, that Apple’s Lady would rise to that middling standard. Alas, no. A baffling and chaotic affair, the show is as poorly made as any television drama we’re likely to see this year. Moreover, it exposes afresh its lead actress’s long-standing stiltedness on-screen. If Portman wants a future beyond Dior ads, she had better pray that casting directors forget this outing soon. 

The actress plays Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish homemaker and former high school reporter wed to the dull but upstanding Milton (Brett Gelman). When, on the morning of Charm City’s 1966 Christmas parade, an 11-year-old goes missing, Maddie experiences an emotional crisis that sends her fleeing her marriage. Because the young girl in question is not the titular slain “lady,” a secondary plot must run alongside the first. In this storyline, an African American activist named Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) works for the betterment of the black community, even as she hurtles toward the events that will lead, a month later, to her death. 

The practical tethering of these narratives is simple enough: Shattered by the missing child’s death, Maddie begins digging into Cleo’s. Their thematic connection, however, is what really counts. Both of our heroines are reckless strivers, increasingly desperate to break the shackles of sex and circumstance. In Maddie’s case, this means putting aside traditional values in the name of self-actualization. (In addition to leaving her husband, Portman’s character abandons a son and commences an affair.) Cleo, meanwhile, runs up against a different set of rules. To make ends meet, she must work for unrepentant gangster Shell Gordon (The Wire’s Wood Harris). Yet doing so disqualifies her for a place in an activist community that must, given the era, maintain appearances. 

Had Lady in the Lake been filmed 15 years ago, it might have been a straightforward liberation parable in the style of The Hours (2002), Stephen Daldry’s feminist fantasia in multiple keys. Since this is 2024, a darker ideology gets its say. Peppering the show’s action is an ill-designed voiceover track in which a dead Cleo scolds Maddie for caring about her murder. (“You came at the end of my story and turned it into your beginning.”) Six weeks ago in these pages, I reviewed Netflix’s Eric, which condemns white people for failing to notice a black man’s death. Lady in the Lake takes the opposite tack without batting an eye. If one didn’t know better, one might suppose that the point is to bring white viewers under political discipline, not to impose a coherent “antiracist” standard. 

Unlikable characters, ideological complaint: Is there anything Apple’s latest doesn’t offer? One possible answer is a clear sense of what is literally happening on-screen. Another is pacing decisions that make a lick of sense. Among the tricks in creator Alma Har’el’s (Bombay Beach) tool bag are dream sequences and symbols that bleed messily into her characters’ real lives. Frequently presented as montages, these moments are insufficiently distinguishable from what is actually taking place. Perhaps such self-conscious “artfulness” would work if the series weren’t already overstuffed and overlong. It is though. So caught up is Har’el in minor subplots and digressions that the main thrust feels at times like an afterthought. 

Given recent resurgences of the oldest hatred, we should be relieved that an Israeli showrunner can still cast an Israeli actress in a role that emphasizes her Jewishness. It would be a great shame if such productions were tacitly outlawed in Hollywood. As things stand, however, the ignominy belongs to Har’el, Portman, Apple, and everyone else involved in Lady in the Lake’s creation. They got to make the show they wanted, thank God. But it is terrible.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer. 

, The road is as familiar as it is well traveled. An ingénue enchants us all with her puckish charm. Half a decade later, she strikes it rich with a Marvel/Star Wars project or three. Perhaps the occasional award bait falls into her lap, but, time being what it is, every offer soon begins to look enticing. One minute she’s accepting an Oscar for headlining a Darren Aronofsky masterpiece. The next she’s married to Murray from Stranger Things in a tedious racism-of-the-week miniseries.  Such is the career arc of Natalie Portman, the early-aughts “it” girl turned edutainment antihero. In her most recent serious project, 2023’s May December, the Israeli American played an actress sucking the metaphorical blood of a Mary Kay Letourneau type she hoped to portray on film. Portman’s latest role is as a housewife-cum-journalist investigating the murder of a black woman in midcentury Baltimore. In both instances, the former starlet’s character exists to critique “white female privilege,” a leftist bugbear that transforms anthropological interest into “harm.” Is it surprising to find a performer of Portman’s fame in such parts? It shouldn’t be. Had the Black Swan star passed, Alicia Vikander or Elizabeth Olsen would surely have come aboard.  Mikey Madison and Natalie Portman in Lady in the Lake. (Courtesy of Apple TV+) Of course, even a vaguely sad career choice can lead to passable entertainment. Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake certainly tries hard. Based on Laura Lippman’s novel of the same name, the limited series belongs to a flourishing genre of gal-meets-noun productions (The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window) that, while never quite good, are at least evocatively staged. One might expect, given its well-received source material, that Apple’s Lady would rise to that middling standard. Alas, no. A baffling and chaotic affair, the show is as poorly made as any television drama we’re likely to see this year. Moreover, it exposes afresh its lead actress’s long-standing stiltedness on-screen. If Portman wants a future beyond Dior ads, she had better pray that casting directors forget this outing soon.  The actress plays Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish homemaker and former high school reporter wed to the dull but upstanding Milton (Brett Gelman). When, on the morning of Charm City’s 1966 Christmas parade, an 11-year-old goes missing, Maddie experiences an emotional crisis that sends her fleeing her marriage. Because the young girl in question is not the titular slain “lady,” a secondary plot must run alongside the first. In this storyline, an African American activist named Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) works for the betterment of the black community, even as she hurtles toward the events that will lead, a month later, to her death.  The practical tethering of these narratives is simple enough: Shattered by the missing child’s death, Maddie begins digging into Cleo’s. Their thematic connection, however, is what really counts. Both of our heroines are reckless strivers, increasingly desperate to break the shackles of sex and circumstance. In Maddie’s case, this means putting aside traditional values in the name of self-actualization. (In addition to leaving her husband, Portman’s character abandons a son and commences an affair.) Cleo, meanwhile, runs up against a different set of rules. To make ends meet, she must work for unrepentant gangster Shell Gordon (The Wire’s Wood Harris). Yet doing so disqualifies her for a place in an activist community that must, given the era, maintain appearances.  Had Lady in the Lake been filmed 15 years ago, it might have been a straightforward liberation parable in the style of The Hours (2002), Stephen Daldry’s feminist fantasia in multiple keys. Since this is 2024, a darker ideology gets its say. Peppering the show’s action is an ill-designed voiceover track in which a dead Cleo scolds Maddie for caring about her murder. (“You came at the end of my story and turned it into your beginning.”) Six weeks ago in these pages, I reviewed Netflix’s Eric, which condemns white people for failing to notice a black man’s death. Lady in the Lake takes the opposite tack without batting an eye. If one didn’t know better, one might suppose that the point is to bring white viewers under political discipline, not to impose a coherent “antiracist” standard.  Unlikable characters, ideological complaint: Is there anything Apple’s latest doesn’t offer? One possible answer is a clear sense of what is literally happening on-screen. Another is pacing decisions that make a lick of sense. Among the tricks in creator Alma Har’el’s (Bombay Beach) tool bag are dream sequences and symbols that bleed messily into her characters’ real lives. Frequently presented as montages, these moments are insufficiently distinguishable from what is actually taking place. Perhaps such self-conscious “artfulness” would work if the series weren’t already overstuffed and overlong. It is though. So caught up is Har’el in minor subplots and digressions that the main thrust feels at times like an afterthought.  Given recent resurgences of the oldest hatred, we should be relieved that an Israeli showrunner can still cast an Israeli actress in a role that emphasizes her Jewishness. It would be a great shame if such productions were tacitly outlawed in Hollywood. As things stand, however, the ignominy belongs to Har’el, Portman, Apple, and everyone else involved in Lady in the Lake’s creation. They got to make the show they wanted, thank God. But it is terrible. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer. , , , https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/LA.TV_.webp, Washington Examiner, Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/cropped-favicon-32×32.png, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/feed/, Graham Hillard,