9 years after we first heard Robert Durst mutter “Killed all of them, after all,” “The Jinx” is again, with a brand new, six-episode Half Two that premiered Sunday on HBO. And why not?
Perhaps it feels unseemly, or like previous information, with Durst having died in jail in 2022 after the unique collection helped convict him of homicide. However lots occurred within the meantime. You possibly can think about that the filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, who directed each elements, felt a accountability 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 could possibly hope that he felt a accountability to look at his personal position 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 assessment, 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 relating to the disappearance and two deaths wherein Durst was implicated, kick-starting the investigation that led to his conviction and life sentence in 2021 for the homicide of his pal Susan Berman. The affect of the unique broadcast on the favored creativeness is conveyed when a younger regulation clerk remembers exclaiming “Killed all of them after all!” on the point out of Durst’s title, quoting his unintentionally recorded phrases from the unique collection’s chilling closing moments.
This theme reaches an early peak in a scene filmed at a screening of that closing episode in March 2015 in Jarecki’s residence, 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 outstanding composure, most likely conscious about the cameras just a few ft away ready to catch their reactions.
That scene, extra subdued than you anticipate 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, slightly than a twilight-zone exploration of Durst’s life and consciousness. (Durst sat for 20 hours of interviews for the primary collection, however declined to talk with Jarecki for Half Two.)
Much more constricting is the self-consciousness practically 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 fascinating and generally amusing, just isn’t, in these episodes, dramatic or shifting.
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 collection 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 chill out by listening to his jail telephone 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 features of Half Two which might be each acquainted, within the wake of the unique, and formulaic; easing our progress by way of them is the mastery Jarecki and his crew train over their specific model of true-crime documentary. The melding of casual narration (usually by the previous New York Instances reporter Charles V. Bagli) and stay footage with meticulously staged snippets of dramatic re-creation is seamless. The fabric will not be as absorbing as that of the unique, however the modifying nonetheless offers it a tempo and magnificence that might be known as rigorously hypnotic.
With HBO having held again two episodes (in 2015 it held again 4), there may be the prospect that Half Two will provide a shock of the magnitude of Durst’s seeming confession, although it’s laborious to see how. We are able to assume that the final two episodes will embrace Durst’s testimony on the Berman trial, and the enjoying 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 telephone. Maybe we’ll hear Jarecki say one thing extra introspective concerning the affect of the present. In any case, it appears nearly sure that we’ll be again right here in six weeks, speaking about “The Jinx.”
