Charlatan · Elizabeth Holmes · Landscapers
Plus: A roundup that left Eve's floor dirty
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
Herbalist Jan Mikolášek was a notorious faith healer in what is now the Czech Republic through the turbulent early twentieth century. His cures were dispensed to hundreds of thousands of patients, from local village-dwellers to Nazi officials to communist president Antonín Zápotocký. His success didn’t stop him from attracting suspicion from the press, who called him a charlatan, or from the post-Zápotocký regime, which stripped him of his wealth and prosecuted him in a sensational trial in the 1950s.
The story
Agnieszka Holland’s movie, the official Czech entrant for last year’s Best International Feature Film Oscar, is filled with bottles. Each bottle contains a sample of urine, the morning’s output preferably, to be held up to the light by Jan Mikolášek (Ivan Trojan) for diagnosis.
Make your own “taking the piss” jokes — this is far from the most disturbing part of Charlatan, a movie that, despite its title, isn’t very interested in whether or not Mikolášek was able to treat people just with a glance at their whizz. And while it opens with his arrest for double homicide, the truth behind that accusation is also low in the story’s set of priorities.
After the death of Zápotocký in 1957, Mikolášek instantly loses his freedom from state interference. We see him arrested and beaten, then informed that two of his patients died of strychnine poisoning. The murder trial becomes a framing device to explore his character. When Mikolášek’s defense lawyer clumsily says he needs to know him in order to defend him, it cues up a cavalcade of flashbacks. Here comes wartime trauma, repressed homosexuality, passion for herbs, and a violent streak.
Mikolášek’s great contradiction is his intense drive to heal coupled with his selfishness, cruelty, and enormous ego. He cares for Mühlbacherová (Jaroslava Pokorná), the older widow who trains him in the urine-diagnostic arts, in what starts off as a cottagecore dream (oh, to be bundling herbs in a wee stone house surrounded by cats and a handsome young assistant!) that turns very dark, very quickly (wait, what is he doing to those cats). There is repeated animal cruelty in the movie, as well as self-harm, and the suggestion of sexual coercion in the relationship between Mikolášek and his devoted assistant Frantisek (Juraj Loj).
In the film, the murder trial encompasses both Mikolášek and Frantisek, with the former depending on the loyalty of the latter. But the movie largely throws away the murder subplot, pushing instead for an ironic twist to their relationship. As a representation of the trial it’s basically useless, as Frantisek’s character is a narrative invention. While one of Mikolášek’s assistants did go on trial, it wasn’t for any kind of murder involvement — because there never was a murder case in the first place.
While the real-life Mikolášek was tried by the state, it was for tax evasion. Was this changed up to heighten the dramatic tension, or to mirror a con artist’s techniques? While the movie leaves you in no doubt that the Communist Czech legal system of the time was deeply unfair, it dulls its effect by going for generalities over specifics.
Is it worth a watch? Yes, if you can stomach the violence and narrative switcheroos. Otherwise, it’s probably better to check out Holland’s more famous film about a real-life case of deception, 1991’s Europa Europa.
Charlatan is available for rent on Apple iTunes, Google Play Movies, Vudu, and Amazon Video. — Margaret Howie
If Margaret put you in a review mood…The reviews are coming in for Landscapers, the HBO series about Christopher and Susan Edwards (played by David Thewlis and Olivia Colman), who were sentenced to life in prison after killing Susan’s parents and burying their bodies in their Nottinghamshire yard. The show kicked off Monday night at 9, and contains four weekly episodes.
Sentiments are decidedly mixed — and you can listen to Wednesday’s Extra Hot Great podcast for more on what SDB thought — but I’m not pointing these reviews out to you because of that as much as I want someone else to rage along with me about the terrible terrible terrible puns in most of the coverage. Thanks in advance. — EB
Review: ‘Landscapers’ Is Not Your Typical True-Crime Love Story [New York Times]
The Times also interviews the key players in a separate piece largely focused on how the series looks at “the couple’s interior lives through the prism of Susan Edwards’s unusually fertile, movie-fueled imagination.” That stylistic decision is praised by critic Mike Hale, but the screenplay (by first-timer Ed Sinclair, who is married to Colman) “doesn’t match the inventiveness of the direction … it’s also more murky (and sentimental) than it needs to be about Susan’s true nature, which slightly dampens Colman’s performance.” However, “Thewlis absolutely nails Chris,” and that the show “it doesn’t look or feel like any other did-they-or-didn’t-they dramatization you’ve watched recently” is either good or bad, depending on how you feel about the true crime that’s already out there, I guess.
HBO's 'Landscapers' unearths the bizarre love story at the center of a grisly crime [NPR]
“(Fair warning: This review will dig up some spoilers from HBO's Landscapers.)” the piece begins, which you know some editor thought was super-clever! The review isn’t jokey, though, saying the series “offers a wonderfully inventive look at a bizarre case, with top-notch acting and direction” but that “its quality also encourages viewers to identify with a couple who may not deserve the empathy this show will likely generate.”
'Landscapers' plants Olivia Colman and David Thewlis on a flawed foundation [CNN]
The hed tells the tale, as does the lead graf: “The blueprint for Landscapers, a four-part British miniseries airing on HBO, turns out to be considerably sturdier than the construction, somewhat wasting the dream pairing of Olivia Colman and David Thewlis. It's still an interesting detour into bizarre true crime, but so stylized as to blunt the overall impact by being too cute for its own good.” One might say the same for that headline and construction metaphor, but whatever!
‘Landscapers’: Clever HBO series knows where bodies are buried — in a British backyard [Chicago Sun Times]
Now we’re really getting into stupid pun territory, and I feel bad for skimming the jokeless NYT review. This take is from follower buyer Richard Roeper, and its first line is “It’s Raking a Murderer,” and I am starting to wish I never decided to write this little item. The leads get praise, but Roeper says that “the trickery and the cinematic flourishes can be a bit much, and we find ourselves pining for the ‘real’ story so we can learn what actually happened on that fateful night.”
I’ve struggled with how to cover Elizabeth Holmes’ claim on the stand that an allegedly abusive relationship with Theranos co-founder Sunny Balwani was partially behind her company’s allegedly fraudulent practices. In the end, I decided that my best move would be to keep my mouth shut and to listen.
That’s why I was interested this piece in Mel, the relaunched men’s mag initially launched to push razors but eventually lauded as "the rare men’s magazine that has taken upon itself to investigate masculinity, not enforce it.” (That was the old version, idk if cool people still like it now?) It’s headlined “Elizabeth Holmes’ abuse claims don’t sit well with other survivors.”
Reporter Miles Klee cites Theranos chronicler John Carreyrou before he gets to any survivors, saying that Carreyrou had already anticipated a “Svengali defense.” The story appears to only speak with one person (who does indeed identify as an assault survivor); the rest is based off tweets from women who don’t appear to state their personal histories.
So I guess what I am saying, really, is that I deeply and earnestly want to know women who were in abusive relationships feel about Holmes’s claims…but this piece ain’t it. You can find tweets to support any hypothesis, lord knows I’ve done it, but pasting in a couple, then writing a piece with that hed feels like the bogus kind of journalism that made Facebook great. Hmm, maybe Mel was better when it was a Dollar Shave Club pub. — EB
This Longreads reading list really fucked up my day. I was supposed to mop my kitchen, strip my bed, and do a bunch of restocking at my shop Monday night, but instead I fell into a hole with Longreads’s “very scammy reading list.”
All five pieces on the list were ones that I’d read before, ranging in publication dates from 2005 to 2018. All of them detail great impersonation scams, stories that have been written about countless places involving people who have become household names for folks like us. Each of these takes set the standard for how these tales are told.
If, like me, you felt like procrastinating instead of doing what needs to be done during this to-do-listy season, I hope you’ll cuddle up with this set of longreads and enjoy the ride. — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: Netflix’s true-crime cash concerns, and BTK on TV.
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