Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 28, 2015

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 begins with the disturbing discovery of a torso which is found by a kid fishing in Galveston Bay. A quick investigation of the area turns up several garbage bags with other body parts, but no head. This first episode will be a field day for lovers of police procedurals like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The First Season, as Jarecki spends quite a bit of time with various detectives who worked the Galveston case, showing how “basic” police work led the cops rather quickly to Durst, who was arrested without incident. There are a number of rather funny comments that pass by the wayside here, including one cop mentioning how he knew things were going to be “interesting” when he was confronted with a headless, armless and legless “body”. That “interest” is only accentuated once Durst is arrested and is given $250,000 bail. The police, still unaware of Durst’s prestigious lineage, ask him if he has that kind of money, perhaps smirking quietly to themselves. “Well, not on me,” he reportedly replied to the gobsmacked policemen.

Jarecki probably wisely holds off on actual Durst interview footage for at least a little while, instead choosing to spend enough time to anchor the viewer in the horror of the Galveston tale, and how it ultimately became linked to the disappearance of Durst’s wife Kathie, and (even later) the murder of Susan Berman. By the time Durst does amble on screen in (relatively speaking) contemporary interview segments, the “stage” has been set for Durst to supposedly clear things up, at least from his perspective.

Slowly but surely, though, Jarecki peels back the seemingly unending layers of the Durst persona, detailing his “poor little rich boy” upbringing, which was capped by his witnessing of his mother’s apparent suicide when he was only seven. Durst’s fractious relationships with his siblings are also depicted in some actually kind of funny depositions with one of his brothers, where it becomes clear that while none of his relatives really wants to outright accuse him of killing people, they’re not all that upset that he’s in custody, especially since he evidently has a long history of stalking various family members.

The middle episodes get into the weeds of the various crimes that Durst was suspected of committing, with some fascinating commentary from various legal types who were involved in one way or the other (including Judge Jeanine Pirro, now a Fox news personality and who was then a District Attorney attempting to bring Durst to justice for the disappearance and presumed murder of Kathie Durst). The interlocking stories of the victims is presented organically, if not always chronologically, and Jarecki regularly returns to Durst himself to provide his side of various events. It slowly becomes apparent that Jarecki is tending to believe a lot of what Durst is proffering, a tendency which aids the documentary’s thrilling segue into its own investigative ambience once Jarecki and his crew stumble upon a seemingly “minor” clue that may in fact finally cook Durst’s seemingly impervious goose.

The final two episodes of the documentary miniseries are among the most viscerally exciting television events in recent memory, though things are handled in a rather low key and surprisingly non-alarmist way. It’s absolutely riveting to see Jarecki provide various pundits and people involved in the cases with the little “tidbit” he uncovered, and to have them slowly appreciate the import of his discovery (Pirro’s response is especially enjoyable). When this same evidence is finally shoved under Durst’s nose, he seems to know the jig is up, as evidenced by his monologue caught on a still live microphone when he visited the bathroom after the last interview had wrapped. His supposedly “off the record” comments cap this documentary with some of the most chilling insights into sociopathy (perhaps psychopathy) ever offered to television viewers in the entire history of the medium.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Neither of the two discs included in The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst Blu-ray release contain any supplementary material.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.