Salon.com > top of the lake

Must do’s: What we like this week

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

BOOKS

Laura Miller recommends the memoir of Alexandra Aldrich, a descendent of the prominent Astor family, which provides a glimpse into a less privileged, less happy childhood than one would expect:

In premise alone, “The Astor Orphan” sounds like some delicious children’s novel, the kind of thing you’d gobble a dozen times over by the age of 8. In reality it’s a mournful, curious tale of an anxious child’s longing for security. Aldrich, who kept a diary from an early age, apparently sticks closely to it; her book has a halting, episodic rhythm. It lacks the fluency of truly accomplished storytelling, but the story it tells is so extraordinary, and Aldrich’s tone is so baldly honest, that the reader’s attention will not flag.

“Top of the Lake’s” superb finale

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:51:00 +0000

The stupendous Jane Campion-Elisabeth Moss collaboration “Top of the Lake” finished on the Sundance Channel last night: if you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? If you have, you know that the last two hour installment masterfully wrapped up the series major mystery without forgoing its lyrical, steady tone. A dramatic and vast shot of a teenage boy plummeting off a cliff was balanced with scenes of that same teenager and his friends having an outdoor slumber party, that same teenager comforting his friend by cutely demonstrating how a baby might worm its way out of the birth canal. The small moments were not drowned out by the large.

We now know who impregnated the 12 year old Tui, or at least the circumstances under which she was impregnated. The police chief Al, a strange guy who has never shown that much urgency about the rape, who kept hitting on his colleague Robin (Moss), who was pretty chummy with Tui's father and town druglord Matt, but who seemed harmless enough, was actually running an underage sex ring. This reveal made sense of many things— no wonder this town has had such a lackadaisical attitude towards rape— without feeling like the heart of the drama. The scene of Robin, drinking alone and considering suicide, felt more like an emotional climax than her epiphany about Al. Tui shooting Matt in the back felt more like the dramatic climax than Robin shooting Al in the chest.

“Top of the Lake”: Like the best crime series, it’s about much more than crime-solving

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:55:00 +0000

In ‘Top of the Lake," Jane Campion’s extraordinary new crime series, beginning tonight on the Sundance Channel, Holly Hunter plays GJ, a plainspoken spiritual guru, tending to a flock of lost middle-aged women — among them, a sex addict, a woman reeling from the loss of her beloved chimpanzee — with minimal spiritual mumbo jumbo, maximum hard truths. She wears her hair long and white, her shirts buttoned up to the collar, looking like an impatient Mexican gangster lost in the New Zealand bush (or as Emily Nussbaum points out in her review of the series, something like Jane Campion). I’m going to channel GJ’s particular harsh bluntness here, because “Top of the Lake,” gorgeous and ambiguous and gripping like a hallucination, deserves it: Watch it. Do it now.