9 years after we first heard Robert Durst mutter “Killed all of them, in fact,” “The Jinx” is again, with a brand new, six-episode Half Two that premiered Sunday on HBO. And why not?
Possibly it feels unseemly, or like previous information, with Durst having died in jail in 2022 after the unique sequence helped convict him of homicide. However rather a lot occurred within the meantime. You’ll be able to think about that the filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, who directed each elements, felt a duty to a narrative he has now lived with for 20 years. And since “The Jinx” has successfully erased the road between itself and the case it chronicles, you would hope that he felt a duty to look at his personal function within the prosecution and conviction of Durst, the rich and eccentric New York actual property inheritor.
That examination doesn’t come within the 4 episodes HBO offered for overview, however Jarecki acknowledges the present’s persevering with affect in a wry, “Are you able to consider that occurred?” trend.
It’s famous, as soon as once more, that in 2013 “Jinx” producers shared with prosecutors proof concerning the disappearance and two deaths by which Durst was implicated, kick-starting the investigation that led to his conviction and life sentence in 2021 for the homicide of his good friend Susan Berman. The impression of the unique broadcast on the favored creativeness is conveyed when a younger legislation clerk remembers exclaiming “Killed all of them in fact!” on the point out of Durst’s title, quoting his unintentionally recorded phrases from the unique sequence’s chilling ultimate moments.
This theme reaches an early peak in a scene filmed at a screening of that ultimate episode in March 2015 in Jarecki’s condo, on the identical day the fleeing Durst — who had been watching the present together with the remainder of us — was discovered and arrested in New Orleans. Family members of Durst’s first spouse, Kathleen McCormack, who had disappeared 33 years earlier, take heed to his obvious confession with exceptional composure, most likely aware of the cameras a couple of ft away ready to catch their reactions.
That scene, extra subdued than you count on it to be, is attribute of the impact of “The Jinx Half Two,” which is as fluidly and handsomely made as the unique however, within the early going, lacks its strangeness and its surprises. Happening after Durst’s apprehension, the brand new episodes are largely a law-enforcement procedural and courtroom drama, quite than a twilight-zone exploration of Durst’s life and consciousness. (Durst sat for 20 hours of interviews for the primary sequence, however declined to talk with Jarecki for Half Two.)
Much more constricting is the self-consciousness almost each character — prosecutor, protection lawyer, witness, journalist, Jarecki himself — brings to the display screen. Everybody has seen “The Jinx”; everybody is aware of the way it contributed to Durst’s downfall; everyone seems to be in on the joke. And the wholesale intrusion of the present into its personal narrative, whereas it may be attention-grabbing and generally amusing, will not be, in these episodes, dramatic or transferring.
Jarecki addresses this drawback in a number of methods. One is to play up Durst’s comedian potential. The oddity that might be creepy and off-putting within the first sequence performs right here, primarily in jailhouse movies, as extra childlike and puckish. Durst fashions his jail uniform for a customer, or gingerly demonstrates his exercise routine. Everybody, together with the prosecutors, calls him Bob; clerks calm down by listening to his jail cellphone calls, laughing as every begins, “This can be a pay as you go name from …” “Bahhhb.”
One other, extra central, tactic is a concentrate on the Durst demimonde — the gathering of aspiring scenesters, hangers-on and enablers who agglomerated round him due to his cash (with which he might be beneficiant) and the cachet his cash conferred. Proclaiming their loyalty, abetting Durst in his machinations, barely suppressing their internecine jealousies and hatreds, and ultimately ratting out each other and Durst himself, they supply many of the new installment’s dramatic and emotional excessive factors.
There are points of Half Two which can be each acquainted, within the wake of the unique, and formulaic; easing our progress by means of them is the mastery Jarecki and his crew train over their explicit model of true-crime documentary. The melding of casual narration (typically by the previous New York Occasions reporter Charles V. Bagli) and reside footage with meticulously staged snippets of dramatic re-creation is seamless. The fabric is probably not as absorbing as that of the unique, however the enhancing nonetheless provides it a tempo and elegance that might be referred to as rigorously hypnotic.
With HBO having held again two episodes (in 2015 it held again 4), there’s the possibility that Half Two will provide a shock of the magnitude of Durst’s seeming confession, although it’s exhausting to see how. We are able to assume that the final two episodes will embody Durst’s testimony on the Berman trial, and the taking part in of the “Killed all of them” tape for the jury. Maybe we’ll see Jarecki’s unsuccessful try to speak to Durst outdoors a Louisiana jail, which he filmed along with his cellphone. Maybe we’ll hear Jarecki say one thing extra introspective concerning the impression of the present. In any case, it appears nearly sure that we’ll be again right here in six weeks, speaking about “The Jinx.”
