Tag: 2.09

The ‘ACS: Versace’ Finale Sidelined Its Women For A Very Good Reason

Since its premiere The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story has been decidedly different from other shows. It’s a Ryan Murphy series that remains constantly somber and dark, veering away from the campy tone that so often defines the creator. It’s a show that portrayed a serial killer who targeted the gay community not as a sideshow attraction or a punchline but as a psychologically compelling horror story. It’s a show that proudly and directly discussed LGBT discrimination in broad strokes that applied to both Gianni Versace‘s murder by Andrew Cunanan and modern day conversations about discrimination. In many, many ways the Versace season of American Crime Story was revolutionary — but this revolution left very little room for the women of this story. That changed last night with the season’s finale, “Alone.”

It’s worth taking a minute to praise the skill that went into structuring Versace. The first 10 minutes of this crime drama started with the crime that made Cunanan a household name — his murder of legendary designer Gianni Versace. It was the dramatic and celebrity-laden hook that made this story instantly engaging, but after starting with that bang, Versace switched to a controlled burn as it slowly and painstakingly unravelled the lives of the five men Cunanan murdered, as well as Cunanan himself. After this winding narrative back through history, “Alone” snapped back to the moment right after Cunanan committed his most famous murder. This figure who was always defined by who he was, compared to the people around him, is now alone on a houseboat, waiting for his inevitable death. It’s a haunting transition from the confident and dangerous man the show has established Cunanan to be, and it’s also a shift that allows Versace to embrace its chorus of grief-stricken women.

Because of who he was and what he did, Cunanan is again the central focus of this episode, but he shares the spotlight with several personifications of grief; the most notable of which is Judith Light‘s Marilyn Miglin. Caught between relief that her husband’s murderer will finally be captured, and unbridled anger that it’s taken authorities this long, Marilyn’s grief is shown hiding under a deceptively strong-willed and steely exterior. In between her fiery glares and lip quivers, Light shows just how much this loss has wounded her character. Penelope Cruz‘s Donatella Versace has a similar but much more extravagant breakdown. Surrounded by gorgeous fabrics, this once seemingly fearless woman laments the last time she ignored her brother’s call. All season this character has been portrayed as the height of sophistication and wealth, but in this one moment as she sobs, she’s no longer beautiful. She’s in pain because of the man she lost, and no amount of beautiful dresses can bring him back.

Though Light and Cruz undeniably steal the show, there are other flickers of grief from Versace‘s female secondary characters. At one point, Cunanan (Darren Criss) is shown watching a reconstructed interview that actually happened with his longtime best friend, Lizzie (AnnaleighAshford). It’s a small moment, but Lizzie’s reminder that this serial killer was a godfather carries weight. Cunanan had a life and people who genuinely loved him before he became the monster he died as. Though its a far more subtle moment, the wide-eyed Mary Ann Cunanan (Joanna Adler) also gets her moment to mourn the son she used to adore. Shown transfixed to the crime report unfolding in Miami, Mary Ann follows without question when the police ask her to come with them. Regardless of what happens next, she knows her little boy is dead. As horrible as Cunanan’s many crimes were, that revelation hurts.

Ricky Martin‘s Antonio D’Amico also gets a heartfelt moment of mourning in Versace‘s final episode, choosing to take a handful of pills rather than face life without his lover. However, there’s a sort of intentional dullness to Martin’s portrayal of sorrow. He seems so hurt, he’s unable to fully express his pain in any form other than action. Though those actions communicate Antonio’s own personal grief, it’s the tears of the women around him that make “Alone” a distinctly sad episode of television.

In a way, it’s a bit odd that a show as revolutionary as Versace would end on such a typical portrayal of gender. In our society, women are the ones who are allowed to cry and express grief while men are expected to bottle up these particular emotions. Aside from a couple of pointed outbursts from Antonio throughout the season, that’s essentially what happens in Versace. But seeing as how this episode was directed by Daniel Minahan, the director who was responsible for some of this season’s most spectacular episodes including “House by the Lake”, it feels like there’s a very good reason why this show’s emotional climax hinges on breaking down its strong women.

As the show establishes, strong, confident women were always Gianni Versace’s muse. The designer had little patience for fashion empire institutions that took themselves too seriously, instead choosing to embrace models and designs that embraced life. Because of this, ending this powerful story with two of the show’s most powerful women shamelessly expressing grief over the lives they have lost feels like a tribute to Gianni Versace himself. Yes, the final moments of Versace are appropriately tinged with sorrow, but there’s an unexpected ray of happiness lurking beneath them. Though he was cruelly taken away before his time by a mass murderer, the world was lucky to have Gianni Versace while it did. That’s what Versace‘s mourning women partially represent — pain that such wonderful people were taken before their times.

The ‘ACS: Versace’ Finale Sidelined Its Women For A Very Good Reason

nicola.lambo: #aboutlastnight✨@americancrimestoryfx
Just 1 conversation with @judithlight and you are filled to the brim with her love + her light. She drinks you in and for that moment the rest of the world simply melts away. She makes You feel incredibly special and THAT is her #superpower
You are #inspiring #enlightening and hands down one of the most giving human beings #onset and off the set. So much #love💖 for you!
I adore you for creating this artistic picture with me… mini #photoshoot📸

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” Was a Rejection of Glamour

“When I first started in television, they only gave me thirty minutes to make an impression,” says Lee Miglin’s widow Marilyn, in the final episode of American Crime Story—which by now, in its ninth hour, has had 540 minutes to do the same, and which has revealed itself in increments to be far less about Versace than about queer lives, and queer death. The impression that it leaves is somber, and funereal, and its slow-burn voyeurism ends up feeling like an act of violence.

More than Gianni Versace’s ghost, the show is haunted by the specters of injustice, prejudice, complacency, heteronormativity, et cetera, et cetera; these are the spooks that make it just as much an American horror story as a crime one. Miglin’s widow is brought back, somewhat unsubtly, as a heart-rending reminder of the chaos Andrew Cunanan has caused throughout the season. When she talks about her marriage to Cunanan’s former john-turned- murder victim, Lee, as being like “a fairytale,” we’re meant to hear the “fairy” part a little louder. Mirrors are a motif in this final hour, so that when Andrew, on the run and hiding on a houseboat in Miami, is about to blow his brains out, he can’t help but turn and look at his reflection. In his mouth, the gun looks phallic; and because the gun looks phallic, it is hard not to assume that Cunanan is seeing himself (for the last time, no less) as the “faggy” kid his father mocked, “a sissy boy, with a sissy mind.”

“It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head,” David Foster Wallace said. “They shoot the terrible master.” With one shot, the sissy mind is violently evacuated, and the sissy boy that murdered all those men is dead. The true identity of the “terrible master” in this case is unclear: hours before the suicide, Modesto, Andrew’s father, is on TV offering up exclusive rights to the story of his son’s wild murder spree. The television screen, another mirror, shows Modesto’s callousness to Andrew, and shows us the son and killer’s face in fragments when Andrew Cunanan furiously smashes it and turns it black. A further dark obsidian mirror in Gianni Versace’s tomb will later throw back the distorted face of his distraught and grieving sister, Donatella, overlaid on a baroque medusa’s head. The line is blurred between man, woman, and inhuman monster.

Being a heterosexual woman born in 1988, I’ve had the luxury of being surprised by just how far American Crime Story’s real-life twists and turns have been informed by attitudes towards gay men that seem, to me, completely prehistoric. (I believe this is called “privilege”—although if you would prefer to call it “ignorance,” I would not necessarily correct you.) When the cops detain and interview a drug-addict named Ronnie who has previously sheltered Andrew, his despairing monologue sums up the season’s heaviest message: Andrew Cunanan did talk about Versace, Ronnie shrugs, but then, “We all did. We imagined what it would be like to be so rich and so powerful that it doesn’t matter that you’re gay. The other cops [before Cunanan killed Gianni]—they weren’t searching so hard, were they? Why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays? The truth is, you were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting…. People like me, we drift away; we get sick, and nobody cares. But Andrew was vain. He wanted you to know about his pain. He wanted you to hear. He wanted you to know about being born a lie. Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”

I looked up the difference between “murder” and “assassination,” and it turns out the dividing line is fame. American Crime Story turns out to be not much interested in fame or in famousness at all, but in the stories and the histories of queer men: the sons like Andrew Cunanan, yes, but the fathers, too—the closeted gay husbands of bored housewives, and the would-be husbands of out gay men who were not allowed to marry. Several times in the show, two men discuss the possibility of marriage; and in every instance, one man says, “We can’t,” and means it literally. Ronnie sneers in his big, heavy-handed monologue that men like Cunanan are “born a lie.” In fact, the lie is thrust upon them. The truth is the thing that dogs them, and that haunts them, for no reason other than the fact they’re told they should be haunted by it. (Who is saying this? The terrible master—as informed by Daddy, or by God, or by society, or by fear of the self.)

In a write-up of the second episode, I mentioned that the show avoids Milan Kundera’s definition of true kitsch—“the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word”—by showing us the ugliness, the evil shit, straight off the bat. “Shit happens,” I wrote then, “and then you die; a lot of this shit is unearned, unfair and brutal. A lot of this shit is painful and undignified, and it kills.” Since that week, a great deal more grim shit has happened onscreen. Many more have died. The death toll stands, eventually, at six, which is not much compared to something like The Walking Dead, but is a fairly heavy number for a true-crime series with nine episodes.

Andrew Cunanan dies ignobly on the houseboat, having been surrounded; Gianni Versace, so rich and so powerful it did not “matter” he was gay, is shot and killed; Antonio, his lover, is first excommunicated from the Versace family, and then tries to overdose. Andrew’s mother opens up the door to the FBI, and simply asks if they have killed her son. Modesto, sleazily, remains there in Manila trying to monetize his son’s horrendous crimes. Not happy to reject kitsch’s denial of all shit and leave it there, American Crime Story goes one further and—having first teased us with its possibility, and its seductiveness—rejects all glamour. It is its own slick obsidian mirror, gallows dark and too reflective. It’s affecting, and it’s hard to finish. There’s no other way to put it: what it shows us is entirely too much shit.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” Was a Rejection of Glamour

‘American Crime Story: Versace’ finale recap: ‘Alone’ – TheCelebrityCafe.com

We’ve reached the end, friends. American Crime Story: Versace has finished its run. And what an episode to go out on.

We all knew how this was going to end from the very beginning. The opening scene in the first episode of Versace showed us how Andrew Cunanan killed Gianni Versace. Here, in the final episode, we’re shown the whole event again — this time at a quicker pace, all cut with some catchy music.

This time we actually get to see what happens next: the houseboat, the police stand-off and the unfortunate end that we know can’t be avoided.

After murdering Versace, Cunanan breaks into a Miami houseboat in which he plans to hide out in for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t look like he has an exact plan per-say, but he instead decides just to celebrate by popping some champagne and turning on the local news. He’s a celebrity now, after all, which is just what he’s always wanted. Everyone finally knows his name.

Then, in the smartest move Ryan Murphy could have possibly pulled off, we finally return to Marilyn — Lee Miglan’s wife, portrayed by the Emmy deserving Judith Light (I will never stop raving about how good she is in this show). The FBI show up at her door, telling her that her husband’s murderer has killed again. “When will this end?” she says. “How many more are going to die?”

It’s not the last time Marilyn comes back, thank God, but next, we return to Andrew’s former housemate Ronnie. Suddenly, in this final episode, it makes sense why every episode was so segmented — all the characters that we met are coming back in some way for this finale and the way Versace pulls that off is really kind of brilliant. It just makes us miss Jeff and David.

The FBI question Ronnie about Andrew’s whereabouts, and he gives retorts with an inspired speech about how the police didn’t care about a bunch of murdered gay people until one of them was a celebrity and they were forced to get involved. So good Max Greenfield, so good.

Andrew’s excitement, though, is quickly coming to an end. He realizes that there’s no way he can escape Miami, as there are now police barricades everywhere and he’s made it on to the FBI’s top ten most wanted list. All he can do is sit on this houseboat, eventually having to resort to eating canned dog food, watching all his friends and family appear on television to be questioned.

It’s when his mother is questioned that Andrew hits a breaking point. Scared and confused, he decides to call his father — who’s still hiding out in the Philippines, as we learned in the previous episode — to come bail him out. His dad promises he’ll be there in the next 24 hours, and that he’ll take him away from there.

My favorite moment of the episode comes shortly after this. We cut back to Marilyn, who refused to follow the FBI’s request to come into hiding, as Andrew could come for her next for all they know. Marilyn has never missed a broadcast, and she’s not going to start now.

So, with Andrew watching from home, Marilyn Miglin tells the world about a new perfume she’s designed — one in memory of her deceased mother. “Here is something I made for you,” she says. “The kind of perfume my father would give you for your birthday as a way of saying how special you are.” Andrew watches the whole thing, in awe. Marilyn, who’s just as capable of creating her own reality as Andrew is, has the fortune and fame that he’s always desired. What could have been if only he tried to create instead of destroy.

24 hours later and Modesto isn’t on the houseboat. Instead, he’s on television, making his own name for himself off of Andrew’s fame. Modesto talks about how someday Andrew’s life will be turned into a movie (meaning everything has come full circle now, as American Crime Story has finally capitalized on that), right before Andrew takes out his gun and shoots the screen. Andrew has no one left.

So, he does the only thing left to do — takes a projector into the living room and throws a screening party for one of Versace’s funeral.

This was the moment that got me. Leading up to this, we saw Antonio and Donatella argue about what comes next for the two of them, Donatella telling her brother’s lover that he can’t stay in the house because it’s now owned by the company. But it’s the funeral itself — the difference in the way the two were treated by the priest — that really hit me with those emotions I’ve been waiting for all season.

To make it even better, there’s some real footage of Versace’s funeral thrown into the mix at this point, as we see the real Princess Diana and Elton John in attendance. Andrew watches the whole thing in amazement, then decides it’s about time to shave his head. He knows his days are numbered at this point.

The police learn where he’s staying shortly after the funeral, and the rest is pretty much history. They surround the houseboat, telling Andrew to come out at once, with no luck. They enter, only to find Andrew, lying in the bedroom, gun in his mouth. He’s killed himself.

Right before this, we see one final flashback to him and Versace. They’re on a stage, with Versace politely rejecting Andrew’s request — first for a job as a fashion designer, then as a lover. “It’s not about persuading people you’re going to do something great. It’s about doing it,” Versace tells him.

Andrew, who faced nothing but rejection and heart-ache all his life, now believes he’s done something great. Of course, the things Andrew did were terrible, but the point that American Crime Story: Versace has tried to make this entire season is that everything leading up to the murders was just as terrible. The way homosexuals get treated is terrible. The world, in general, is just a terrible place.

After showing Antonio also deciding to commit suicide, we end by contrasting the difference in cemeteries between Versace and Andrew. Versace has a lavish gravestone, surrounded by candles and decorations, while Andrew is just one of many inside a never-ending mausoleum. The fame he thought he achieved never really did live up to the fame he sought after in the end.

And that’s a wrap for this season of American Crime Story. While it didn’t dig quite as deep into the life of Versace as I may have liked — which I’m assuming is because Versace’s family is still alive and didn’t want Gianni’s life to be portrayed in a show like this — I found myself loving each and every episode. Yes, the whole narrative was a bit confusing, but when looking at the whole thing in retrospect it’s genius what they decided to do here.

‘American Crime Story: Versace’ finale recap: ‘Alone’ – TheCelebrityCafe.com