A lot of talent and potential gone to waste: Top of the Lake

Have finished the 7-part first (and only?) season of Jane Campion's Top of the Lake, and, as noted in earlier post, I was drawn to stay with it by the great acting of Elisabeth Moss (as a New Zealand detective with a specialty of working on cases involving children or abuse), the beautiful scenery, and the many little odd elements that continued to promise to build toward an interesting or satisfying whole. Sadly, that never happens - Campion knows how to establish a mood and a tone, but doesn't quite know what to do when she gets there. So among the elements here is the commune of women who've turned their backs on (male) society and live in some abandoned box cars in a remote setting called Paradise, the lead drug dealer in town and his tough-guy sons who occasionally kneels before his mother's grave and lashes himself with his own belt, the creepy detective sergeant who comes on to Moss/Robin in an extremely clumsy way, and possibly drugs her while she's visiting his far-too-lavish home, and others. By the time all the elements come together at the end of episode seven, there are so many loose threads and so many ridiculous improbabilities that I just felt empty, cheated. For example, the spiritual leader of the women, Holly Hunter (G-J), never says anything wise or helpful - it is totally unclear why any of these women would hitch their star to her and travel half-way around the world. Ultimately, Hunter just walks off the scene. What are we to make of this? Most of the way through the series I thought Campion was conveying a feminist message: the men certainly are horrible, rapists and drug dealers and full of bile and hatred; so I thought, OK, the female detective and the camp of women would present an alternative. But when you get down to it, the women don't protect or help one another either - Moss is the victim of a childhood rape that was never reported, let alone avenged - completely and totally unlikely in this small community; the central figure in the plot is a 12-year-old girl who is pregnant (by her father, we finally learn to no surprise) - nobody helps her except some well-meaning fellow preteens - again, completely impossible that the entire community could be seeking her out for months while a group of teens delivers her daily supplies to a campsite in the woods. There are so many ridiculous turns in this series that it's not even worth recounting any more. It's a great example of a lot of talent - beautifully shot and paced, generally well acted, some scenes powerfully written - without any sense of vision or direction, without, in fact, any sense of how people really live and behave - or misbehave.

At the bottom of Top of the Lake

I've now watched 4 episodes of Top of the Lake, Jane Campion's shot at a miniseries, and I think that means I'm more than half-way through - so I guess I'm in for a dollar - not loving the series, but intrigued enough by its mysterious and drawn in by its strengths. Taking the strengths first: great to see Elisabeth Moss in a more dominant lead role, as a tough detective, and in contemporary hairstyle and dress, and especially great to hear her in an N.Z. (I think) accent - so many Brits/Aussies play Americans so it's kind of cool to see the reverse, and I think she does it really well. She plays a detective from Sydney who's home visiting her ill mother in hometown in what they call Southern Lakes district of New Zealand - looks like a more mountainous Lake Tahoe, and I can imagine this series redone as a U.S. version, set there. The settings are extraordinary and Campion manages a mysterious, dark, moody feeling, much like many American shows shot or set in the NW. In fact, the similarities between Lake and The Killing, which I am also watching, are uncanny and, for anyone watching both series at the same time, confusing: both about a powerful, somewhat opaque detective, pursuing the case of a murdered (or in Lake, missing and presumed murdered) young troubled girl. Whereas Killing, esp in seasons 1 and 2, created a whole network of characters and shifted suspicion onto many in turn - including various family members of the dead girl, her teacher, political operatives in town, et al. - Lake is not as complex in clues and leads. Moss/Robin is on a lonely quest to find the missing or dead Tui. The lack of clues, the lack of mystery is a real drawback in Lake - but we're supposed to be less interested in what happened and who dunnit than in the odd characters that turn up in this community. Problem is I for one cannot believe in any of the odd characters - Tui's brutal family of drug dealers, kind of like a Hell's Angels gang with Maori tatts - of the group of women who set up a commune and healing retreat on a remote stretch of land. Holly Hunter as their guru and spiritual leader is completely preposterous, and it just seems like this cast of outsiders  - the men and the women - are a screenwriter's concept and not recognizable as people: compare any of them with the characters in, say, The Wire, or even in The Killing, and you will know what I mean. I.e., no woman in her right mind, or even out of her right mind, walks into a tough bar, slams down a bill, and says, This is for a fuck. Yeah, right. But putting reality aside and just getting into the spirit of the series - and into Moss's acting - such as her extraordinary long soliloquy over dinner in which she  tells another detective, her boss, about how she was raped and had a daughter out of wedlock etc. - great scene, but an actor's workshop scene, not a scene that grows organically out of this dramatic materials.