8.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The scion of a New York real estate empire, Robert Durst has long been the chief suspect in the notorious 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathie. Further suspicion was raised with the unsolved killing in 2000 of his best friend, Susan Berman, a key witness in the investigation into Kathie's disappearance, as well as the subsequent killing and dismemberment of a neighbor in Galveston, Texas. Durst has consistently maintained his innocence, but throughout this six-part documentary, new evidence is uncovered that may link Durst to one or more crimes.
Starring: Robert Durst, Gary Napoli, Debra Kay Anderson, Chelsea Gonzalez, Michael AntonioDocumentary | 100% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS 2.0
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
UV digital copy
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The Jinx is that rare television documentary that didn’t just utilize a “ripped from the headlines” approach to detailing its subject, but created more than a few headlines of its own when that very subject, gazillionaire Robert Durst, was arrested for first degree murder on the eve of the broadcast of the miniseries’ finale, in large part due to a central denouement which the documentary itself provided. The Jinx is certainly, even easily, one of the most fascinating documentaries to come down the pike in quite a while, not just due to the almost viscerally terrifying weirdness of Durst himself, but due to the almost fatalistic intersection of Durst’s long skirmishes with the law and his eventual meeting with writer-director Andrew Jarecki, who had caught the alleged (mini?) serial killer’s fancy after Jarecki made All Good Things, a somewhat fictionalized account of Durst’s relationship with his first wife Kathie, a marriage which ended in the still unsolved disappearance of the young woman in 1982. Jarecki and Durst struck up a relationship, if not quite a friendship, and Durst, who had long shunned media outreach, sat for hours of interviews with Jarecki. By that time, Durst had already spent a considerable amount of time in stir in the wake of his murder and dismemberment of a Texas man named Morris Black (though it’s notable that Durst actually escaped an actual murder conviction, and his jail time was due to other tangential elements), and was a suspect in the death of Susan Berman, a California writer whose family had connections to organized crime and who herself had facilitated Durst’s responses to the disappearance of Kathie Durst. This may sound like quite the web that was woven by Durst over the course of decades, and indeed it is, but Jarecki, despite ping ponging back and forth between contemporary interview segments, reenactments of long ago developments, and a somewhat nonlinear approach to storytelling, keeps The Jinx clear, concise and consistently compelling.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (largely) in 1.78:1. As should be expected from a documentary which mixes contemporary interview segments with sometimes artfully rendered reenactments and lots of archival footage, there's something of a patchwork quilt quality to the visuals. The newer sequences pop quite well, with excellent sharpness and clarity, especially in the straightforward interview segments, where detail and fine detail are excellent. Jarecki toys with the imagery in several of the reenactments (see screenshot 18 for an example), a choice which sometimes minimally depletes detail levels as well as overall sharpness. The archival footage is all over the place. The still photos typically look very sharp and well defined, while a lot of the video elements are very raggedy looking, obviously sourced from old VHS era tapes.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 which provides occasional immersion in the reenactment sequences especially, but which otherwise is fairly narrow in the interview and voiceover segments, where surround activity is generally fairly limited. Fidelity is top notch throughout all six episodes, though dynamic range is rather restrained overall.
Neither of the two discs included in The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst Blu-ray release contain any supplementary material.
Some may feel Jarecki plays a bit too fast and loose with tone and style, if not with actual substance, in The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, but few will probably argue with how viscerally compelling this multi-episode documentary is from virtually the get go. Durst himself is such an oddly fascinating individual that it's hard to keep your eyes off of him when he's on screen, and once his activities become more and more clear, the documentary becomes incredibly chilling. The Jinx won a well deserved Emmy for Best Documentary this year, and my hunch is even those who typically don't cotton to "true life" offerings may find this one of the most unbelievably engrossing pieces they've seen recently, and perhaps ever. Technical merits are generally first rate, and The Jinx comes Highly recommended.
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Ken Burns
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