Alias Grace
(Canada/USA, 90 min.)
Dir. Mary Harron, Writ. Sarah Polley
Starring: Sarah Gadon, Edward Holcroft,
Rebecca Liddiard, David Cronenberg, Anna Paquin
 |
| Courtesy of TIFF |
Praise be! After taking TVs and streaming
sites by storm with the incredibly timely The
Handmaid’s Tale earlier this year, the oeuvre of Margaret Atwood gets
another page to screen adaptation with her finest novel, Alias Grace. This adaptation from creator Sarah Polley (Stories We Tell) and director Mary
Harron (The Notorious Bettie Page) does
ample justice to its source material based on the first two episodes screening
at the Toronto International Film Festival. Alias
Grace captures the scope, mood, and dryly playful account of the
subjugation of women as told through the harrowing story of alleged murderess
Grace Marks, which, sadly, resonates strongly no matter the setting Atwood uses
or the time in which her work appears. The CBC/Netflix mini-series promises to
satisfy the appetites of Handmaid’s
fans while they await another season, and it’s both similar to and different from
the Hulu series to stand in its own right and further more curiosity for all
things Atwood. This miniseries is some dark and dangerous CanCon.
The first episodes mirror the structure of
the Atwood novel in which Grace tells her story in retrospect to Dr. Simon
Jordan (Wolf Hall’s Edward Holcroft),
a psychiatrist who has been commissioned to evaluate Grace’s mental state and
determine if she merits a pardon. The exchanges begin in the chilling setting
of Kingston Penitentiary where Harron stages the interviews like the quid pro quo dealings of Silence of the Lambs. Gadon’s Grace has
the build of Clarice Starling and the teeth of Hannibal Lecter as she slyly
gains the upper hand of Simon’s interviews and spins him around her finger. She
gradually works her way towards the grisly murder of her former employer Thomas
Kinnear (Paul Gross) and fellow housekeeper Nancy Montgomery (Anna Paquin) in a
Lizzie Borden-like bloodbath. While violent images of the deed punctuate the
narrative with flashbacks, viewers will have to wait until the final episode
for the full-on butchery display. Grace, as good a storyteller as Atwood, Polley,
and Harron, knows that meaty drama is all about prolonging the payoff.
Episode one focuses mainly on the story of
Grace’s journey from Ireland to Canada. Sickly scenes in cramped vessels and
the traumatic death of her mother illustrate the hardship of Canadian immigrant
experiences, while the muddy entrance to Canada and abject poverty that Grace
encounters show that life in the New World wasn’t easy for new arrivals.
Episode two offers a tale of female friendship as Grace recalls her tenure as a
housekeeper in the home of an alderman named Parkinson, whom we barely glimpse,
and his crotchety wife, the latter played with good relish by Martha Burns.
In the Parkinson home, Grace befriends her
roommate Mary Whitney, who teaches her a great deal about life and love.
Newcomer Rebecca Liddiard plays Mary Whitney and brings the same kind of
scene-stealing spark that gained Gadon notice a few years ago. There’s an
uncanny resemblance to Rachel Weisz in Liddiard’s screen presence and
comportment, and her lively performance is a highlight of the series so far.
Other performances, like the novelty of David Cronenberg’s appearance as one of
Dr. Jordan’s colleagues and the haunting madness Paquin provides in the
fleeting glimpses of Nancy, hint at juicy bits to come.
Harron meticulously recreates the period
and handles the dexterity of the intricate narrative to juggle the many tonal
and temporal shifts. Polley’s script is perfectly Atwoodian in its cadence,
tone, and droll observations of everyday sexism, like Grace’s semantic debate
of the hidden pleasure in being a “murderess” rather than a mere murderer.
Unlike the dystopia of the not-so-distant future in The Handmaid’s Tale, Alice
Grace takes place in ye olde Kingston, roughly around 1860, and thus spins
on its head the legacy of stuffy old CBC heritage productions that often come
to mind when one imagines Canadian television. Alias Grace is even bigger and better than the public broadcaster’s
wildly successful miniseries The Book of
Negroes and the only complaint that one could have after this premiere is
that the CBC committed to six hours, rather than twelve. Now when can we get The Year of the Flood?
Alias
Grace screens at TIFF on Thursday, Sept. 14 at the
Winter Garden.
It premieres on CBC Sept. 25
Find more TIFF coverage here.
TIFF runs Sept. 7-17. Visit TIFF.net for more info on this year’s festival.
