MOST EXCITING: Outstanding Lead Actor in Limited Series or Movie
Darren Criss has all the buzz this year for his sensational role in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. Still, there’s not a bad apple in this bunch, which also includes Benedict Cumberbatch doing some of his best work in Patrick Melrose and Jesse Plemons’ complicated and creepy loner character in Black Mirror’s excellent “USS Callister.” Plus, if John Legend wins he’ll have himself an EGOT!
7. American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (FX)
FX’s American Crime Story (not to be confused with American Horror Story by the same creators and on the same network) has established its MO: pick a real, high-profile murder, dramatize it, and nail it. After 2016’s hugely well-received “The People v. O. J. Simpson,” the show followed up this year with “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” which just finished on March 21st. The physical likenesses alone are worth mentioning, as is the out of left field but welcome appearance of Ricky Martin (yes, that one) as Antonio D’Amico, Gianni Versace’s partner. But the most notable asset is Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan, pathological liar, creepshow extraordinaire, and murderer. While Versace’s life and the impact of his death are great in their own right, it’s Cunanan’s story that’s truly fascinating. Told in a series of nonlinear scenes, it offers a strange and specific dual view into the world of gay men in the mid-90s, and into the mind of a serial killer. If you haven’t seen ACS yet, go watch it on FX’s website immediately, before it disappears. –Liz Baessler
There is a lot to love about the second season of American Crime Story. The performances are fantastic. It has a fun, pop soundtrack, which comments on gay culture as Judy Berman writes about for Pitchfork. It has a chilling and tragic true story of a serial killer. All of these aspects that make the show great are overshadowed by the way it is shot. How we see the story has a lot to do with how we interpret it, which could be damning for the show if not handled right.
The show flashes between the aftereffects of the killing of legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace and what came before with his killer Andrew Cunanan. Even though the scenes are dramatized in a fictional way, the underlying story is true. Andrew did kill several men before finally murdering Versace on his doorstep, and he got away with every single one. This true story is why many of us are watching the show, so it is an important element to consider when making it.
However, the style of this show doesn’t reflect the kind of filmmaking we associate with true stories. Far away from a documentary style, the show uses a style that pulls us out of the reality of the story and makes us feel like it is like any other fictional show we watch. This could benefit the entertainment aspect of the show, but when it is done in excess, it makes the show cheap.
This dramatic style of camerawork includes an overload of wide shots, overheads, dolly shots, and lens flares. Many scenes begin in overhead, birdseye views of settings or characters. Even in rather serious scenes like one where Andrew murders someone, the lens flares in the sun, giving beauty to the shot that feels out of place with the tone.
Versace was shot in Gianni’s real Florida mansion, where he was murdered. The home is enormous, and the camerawork constantly reminds you of this, panning out in large rooms or staying wide while actors are talking or giving emotional performances. There’s one way to make use of the space of a location, and then there’s letting it drown out the story.
The constant movement of the camera doesn’t just give the story a fictional feel; it takes away from the remarkable performances by an incredible cast, including Ricky Martin and Penélope Cruz. When so much of a scene is in a wide shot or panning all over the place, it’s hard to focus on the actor. Darren Criss plays Andrew Cunanan so well; it’s hard to imagine he came from a show like Glee. He’s serious, charming, emotional and in an instant, he can switch between the three. He’s a terrifying character and one that is so interesting to the viewer since this show is really about him.
Much of the season so far has been about Andrew and what he did even long before he met Versace. The main question everyone is drawn to is Why did he do this? The best way to try to understand this would be to give us a sense of Andrew’s interior. We need to be close to him, literately close to him with the camera, to appreciate the emotion coming across his face and interpret it ourselves. We hardly get this throughout the show since so much emphasis is put on the settings or ridiculous shots. A good example of the overload of movement by the camera is in the clip below.
In the scene, Andrew is about to trick the motel owner to think he’s from France and get a motel room where he makes plans to murder Versace. The shitty, run down hotel is introduced with a wide, panning shot that makes it look glamorous. The only close and static shots we get are in the brief conversation Andrew has with the owner. Not only does this scene give us a good sense of Andrew’s character, but it also sets up the most important act of the show– the murder of Versace. Instead, the focus is on the camera movement, like so much of the show.
If you think this style is familiar, you’re not mistaken. Cinematographer for the first two episodes Nelson Cragg has worked with the producer of American Crime Story Ryan Murphy one several of his projects before this. Each of Murphy’s other dramas Feud: Bette & Joan and American Horror Story employ much of the same dramatic camerawork by Cragg that is as gaudy as the plotlines. The influence is not entirely on Cragg, since he has experience that is not as overdone as his work with Murphy, including Breaking Bad and Homeland. This style is very much Murphy-esque, but it doesn’t fit with this show like his other dramas that rely heavily on cheap stories. American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson wasn’t popular for the camerawork. It was the writing and performances that won big during awards season.
This show holds the Murphy style when it shouldn’t. It needs a simple and serious tone that reflects the nature of this story. This story is about sexual repression, mental illness, and violent murders at the hands of a deeply troubled man. It’s about the loss of a true legend, by a man he may have befriended. It’s a sad story, full of gruesome violence that’s unsettling. The style of the show shouldn’t glamorize these events by focusing on the material settings and the artificial beauty of the era, but the true pain Andrew Cunanan caused so many families and himself. The show holds true potential for a successful follow-up to the first season if the rest of the season focuses on the story rather than the spectacle of cinematography.
Given how different the second season of American Crime Story is from the first, there’s really no use in comparing them. But I can’t help it (no one can?). The People v. O.J. Simpson was a big deal, initially so popular because of the nostalgia and the appeal of seeing re-creations of the “trial of the century” with John Travolta camping it up as Robert Shapiro, but then so celebrated for its breakout performances. Sterling K. Brown was a relative unknown before the series. Sarah Paulson saw a boost in her career, as well. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t have as well-known a story. Its ensemble isn’t so packed with famous names, with its characters or the actors portraying them. The follow-up series can therefore be surprisingly disparate. But it nevertheless does a good job of pulling us into what it offers.
Even if we can forgive the unfair expectations, though, Ryan Murphy’s latest production is a bit of a bait and switch. The first two episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace promise as much of an operatically tinged biopic about fashion icons Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) as the circumstances of his murder. Ricky Martin is there and impresses as Gianni’s longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico. These are the promoted stars of the show, and yet they’re not in very much of the ensuing chapters. When they are on screen, they’re incredible and worth the wait, but the irregularity of their involvement is more shocking than any contrast against the O.J. installment of this anthology program. I’ve seen eight of the nine episodes (all that were shared with press in advance), and they’re a mixed bag.
The series might as well be called The Assassin of Gianni Versace because it’s almost completely about Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the spree killer who finished out a five-murder run when he shot Gianni in the face outside the fashion designer’s Miami Beach mansion. After depicting the murder in the pilot then continuing with a bouncing-around of time to show a years-earlier meeting between Versace and Cunanan and also some of the police investigation, the series jumps rewinds in chronology with each episode. Watched all together, the structure is reminiscent of the movie Memento. It also plays like each chapter is a prequel to the one that came prior. Villains tend to get such backstories to reveal their fall from innocence to become the evil monster we were originally introduced to. But not in backward spurts.
So we follow in reverse as Cunanan’s other killings are shown. The middle episodes of the series are sort of like standalone vignettes presenting who the victims were and how they met their end. Episode three (“A Random Killing”) is particularly strong as its own thing, mostly thanks to how it plays as a character piece about Marilyn Miglin, wife of the murdered Lee Miglin, and for Judith Light‘s exceptional guest performance in the role. It’s the peak chapter of the show (so far) for me, even if it’s the first instance where we realize The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t going to actually have much Versace in it. And that it’s scarier, gorier, more akin to Murphy’s American Horror Story than the sort of legal drama we saw with The People v. O.J. Simpson. For the next few episodes, these are the tales of a true American psycho.
Spree killers can be interesting, though they aren’t always as compelling as serial killers or one-off murderers. The former lends to psychological character studies, the latter more to whodunits and courtroom procedurals such as the first American Crime Story season. Apologies for the spoiler, but there was no trial for Cunanan, as he took his own life before he could even be apprehended. So instead of moving forward in time and dealing with retroactive explanations and defensive claims in the form of legal proceedings a la The People v. O.J. Simpson, here we get an attempt to connect the dots that may provide some understanding of Cunanan’s bloodshed. Of course, most of what we see is, while not necessarily fictionalized, certainly full of speculation. Many scenes solely involve people not around to provide details.
The series never makes a definite case for the why. We will never know what exactly triggered Cunanan to kill two of his friends, one of his many closeted and married lovers, a random cemetery worker, and a fashion legend whom he may or may not have ever met beforehand. In its best-directed episodes (the Murphy-helmed first, as well as the three by Gwyneth Horder-Payton, including “A Random Killing”) The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t even explicitly spell out everything going on from scene to scene, which is respectably trusting of the intelligence and attention of the audience. The real question explored, as it is in the journalistic and more pointedly titled book it’s based on, “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History,” is how did authorities let one of the most wanted men in America elude capture so long that Versace’s slaying could occur.
That inquiry takes this story through a cloud of themes and contexts pertaining to being a gay man in the ’90s. Not unlike The People v. O.J.‘s essential addresses of race and gender as it informed and mattered to the case of O.J. Simpson and the arguments and conduct of the trial, The Assassination of Gianni Versace touches on how homosexuality was viewed and treated at the time and how Cunanan and his victims’ lives were impacted by the difficulties and dangers of both secrecy and disclosure (one episode even focuses on the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), the HIV/AIDS scare and eventual life-saving drug cocktails that arrived mid-decade, and the plethora of stereotypes. But it’s all kind of tricky, as viewers shouldn’t come away focused on the story’s unavoidable alignment with the “depraved homosexual” trope.
Murphy manages to avoid crossing any lines that could generally offend, I think. Where he doesn’t succeed as well is in the attempt to integrate the Versaces’ story with that of Cunanan. Following the first two episodes, Gianni and Donatella, joined often by Antonio, only sporadically return to the narrative. Initially they’re welcome distractions, but their part in the whole thing becomes inconsistently significant. Weak parallels are made, including one very bad cross-cutting between the nervous coming-out moments of Gianni and another character. Other times it seems like the series is just taking us back to the Versaces randomly now and then because they’re famous persons of interest, there are real events that can be reenacted, and well, Ramirez, Cruz, and Martin are deservedly the primary draw.
As Cunanan, Criss is also pretty phenomenal and this should be a breakout performance for the lesser-known former Glee regular. But the character becomes less interesting over time (especially during a binge-watch, as I experienced them). It’s a tough task to pull off such a mysteriously maniacal charlatan and have him carry a nine-week program so prominently without humanizing the monster too much nor depicting him as an unrealistically heightened caricature. Criss makes it work in spite of the character’s absence of complexity, coming off as a clever yet deranged Clark Kent who never felt loved enough to become a superman with his strengths rather than a villain. Still, the actor is overshadowed by Light and the uncannily perfect Ramirez and often unintelligible but magnificently committed Cruz.
Without seeing the finale, which is being held and which will surely return to the setting of the first two episodes (many viewers will suddenly be reminded after two months that Orange is the New Black‘s Dascha Polenco, as a police detective on the case, once seemed to be one of the stars) I can’t make a call on the series as a whole. But even halfway in it was clear that The Assassination of Gianni Versace is an uneven and sometimes disappointing take on this true-crime story. But as usual with Murphy’s shows, there is enough good to outweigh the bad. They’re mainly watchable for their casting and slew of standout performances — this one even slips Cathy Moriarty in for a bit role and Aimee Mann gets a nice cameo. And the attention to detail in the production design here will make you feel like you’re literally going backwards in time with the narrative.
It’s also worth remembering that these series are never perfect. Even The People v. O.J. Simpson has tons of flaws but might be misremembered as being more substantial than it is if you also saw the documentary O.J.: Made in America around the same time (perhaps all of these true story based anthology shows could use an unaffiliated but complimentary documentary accompaniment). Of course, they also tend to be more fun. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is dark without the camp and levity that fans are likely to anticipate. Whether it will manage to keep most viewers tuning in anyway, I don’t know. But I recommend at least watching the fantastic first three episodes.
ACS news 