Few characters are as consistently-defined across all iterations of a genre as the Detective. In most cases, he is an aloof, yet highly charismatic, man (what are real detectives even like, anyway?) who navigates through situations by the sheer force of his cologne.
BBC’s The Fall, now in its second season, has received some attention for its supposedly counter-intuitive lead character, Stella Gibson, a hardened superintendent detective, played by the piercing Gillian Anderson. Gibson, a woman, is brought to Ireland from England to investigate a serial killer who, surprise, preys on women. The show has been given a lof of credit for the way the victims are treated as people rather than props and for the general badassery of Stella Gibson. However, the killer Paul Spector (played by Jamie Dornan) is sexy and intelligent, and the show devotes a lot of attention to him. Anti-heros are exciting, but to create a viewer-friendly serial killer who preys on women for the sake of entertainment is a tired trick. The show is also written and directed by a man, Allan Cubitt. And though he does aim for some sensitivity on the subject matter, making violence against women sexy and clever at any time is no longer excusable, especially when coming from a man.
But recently, I’ve found comfort in another female-led detective show, and it is beautiful. Top of the Lake is directed and mostly written by Jane Campion, the first female director to win the P’alme d’Or (for her 1993 film The Piano). It takes place in the fictional town of Laketop, New Zealand, a pastoral but troubled town where children travel to school on horseback and drug lords live in A-frame homes. Something sinister is happening, and when a twelve-year-old pregnant girl, Tui Mitcham, disappears, detective Robin Griffith (Elizabeth Moss) must enter the dark corners of the Laketop’s consciousness.
The rural town with a dark underbelly draws immediate, though not entirely unwelcome, comparisons to Twin Peaks (though thankfully missing David Lynch’s stylized, “sexy” take on brutal violence). Much like on Twin Peaks, Each character has a strange back-story. They range from Griffith’s lover Johnno, who spent eight years in a Thai prison, to a woman named Anita, who is recovering after the death of her own love, a possessive chimpanzee named Brad. The show is similarly full of wonderful absurdities that straddle the line of campy-sensibilities, like the group of post-menopausal women living together in cargo crates. The women are led by androgynous and rude guru GJ, who likes to refer to the women as “these crazy bitches,” and says wonderful things like this.
What’s even more impressive, though, is how the show portrays violence—not as the fault of any two individuals, but as a symptom of a deeper sickness ingrained in a larger story. Laketop is a tourist town on a gorgeous body of water surrounded by stark mountains, yet the people who actually live there are caught in a cycle of poverty. Their livelihood is the drug-trade dependent on tourists. Trapped in this economic relationship, families become broken, children go astray, and wealth is abused to disgusting ends. This psychological effect, the toll of a tourism-based, impoverished economy, emanates through the show. The rape and violence that occurs isn’t merely an evil in itself, one that can to be sought out and destroyed in a single act, it’s a symptom of a deeper wrong, an unseen web of shadows. The show doesn’t fetishize poverty either. The characters of the Laketop community are treated as real people instead of stereotypes.
Detective Robin Griffith grew up in Laketop but she left for Sydney at a young age. She returns to take care of her ailing mother but is called-in on the case of Mitcham, who has run-away into the mountains while carrying the child of an unknown man. Griffith’s return to Laketop allow us to see the town through her eyes as she embeds herself in the case, in her own dark past, and in the very landscape (she goes on many runs, giving ample opportunity for some sweeping visuals). There are startling scenes in Top of the Lake: a distant shot of body falling from a mountain-top; a man lashing himself at the foot of his mother’s grave; a silent young boy’s collection of bones; a girl entering the forest by horse with a gun on her back; lovers on the moss; a detective standing by the lake in the gloaming, drinking herself to oblivion in a moment of rattling despair. And yet show is not voyeuristic but inclusive, the music is subtle and not controlling of mood, the beautiful shots are created through the simple, intrinsic splendor of New Zealand. It is not a gaze onto the characters but a merging with their world, specifically Detective Griffith's.
Jane Campion’s physical, raw, and most importantly immersive, tale is the most refreshing detective story I have experienced. It is a true feminine treatment of the genre and a firm step away from the typically-male influenced tropes of voyeuristic violence, fascination with brilliant killers, and fetishizing of dead women. For once we aren’t looking in from the outside. We are part of the landscape, of the community. We are part of Robin Griffith. Her body-journey through turmoil and renewal is what allows her to solve the case and for us both to exhale at the end of this beautiful show, saying “goddam!” After I finished the show I had dreams of snow-capped mountains and of blood, I found myself thinking through it, thinking of regeneration and renewal, I felt it, too, I felt renewed. Can other detective shows do that?
Top of the Lake can be found on Netflix, it is only seven episodes long. There will be a second season, thank God.
Julia Eve lives in New Mexico, she writes about the all-consuming darkness and the ghosts in the earth.
All images courtesy of BBC
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