Radiance of Pure Terror – Weekend
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On HBO Max comes the series “Love and Death”, a true crime about a housewife from a quiet town, who killed a neighbor with an ax and was acquitted by a jury.
In 1980, Candy Montgomery hit her friend Betty Gore 41 times with an axe, and since then her story has been filmed three times. The first time Candy was played by Barbara Hershey in the television movie “Murder in a Small Town” (1990) and received an Emmy Award for this role. It was a fictionalized version of events with the names of the characters changed, a powerful psychodrama that featured a hypnotic interrogation that revealed the childhood trauma of the killer.
Something strange happened with the two new adaptations of this story: they were filmed almost simultaneously and only by coincidence came out with a difference of a year. Candy (2022) starred Jessica Biel and focused on the ominous atmosphere surrounding the murder: what is the episode in which three burly male neighbors walk into the home of an unresponsive Betty and recoil in horror at the sight of the slaughtered body. And now, exactly one year later, the honored Hollywood screenwriter David Kelly presents his version of the nightmare on the small screen – the husband of Michelle Pfeiffer, the author of L.A. Law and Ally McBeal, whose career shot up again after the release of “Big Little Lies”. The story of Candy Montgomery is, of course, his material. Before becoming a screenwriter, Kelly worked as a lawyer and ate a dog on court dramas – and almost the most dramatic part here also takes place in court. In addition, Kelly’s recent scripts (“Play back”), “Lincoln for a Lawyer”) are involved in the theme of family discord and adultery – and the murder of Betty was preceded by a secret affair between Candy and her husband.
Nevertheless, inquisitive television critics are wondering: why did this plot of filmmakers fascinate so much that two series were filmed about it at the same time? “What is so special, fascinating, important about it that the story of this murder needs to be retold again and again? writes a reviewer from Rolling Stone. “Maybe this is a Rorschach test and each screenwriter sees something different when looking at Candy brandishing an ax?”
David Kelly definitely saw his own here. He begins his retelling from afar – from the moment when Candy (Elizabeth Olsen), an exemplary Methodist church member and caring mother of two children, withering in a cold marriage, falls during a basketball game, finds herself in close proximity to neighbor Alan Gore and smells emanating from it smells like sex. And then something unprecedented happens: having caught fire with the idea to get the nondescript Alan at all costs (the choice for this role of Jesse Plemons with his peculiar ugliness is a sniper casting), she does not seduce him in the usual sense. No, Candy Montgomery acts decently: she starts a serious conversation with Alan and convinces her to enter into a love affair with a guarantee – no damage to the legal spouses. As soon as the threat of feelings dawns on the horizon, everything will be over. Exhausted by the sour mine of his wife Betty (Lily Rabe), who is constantly in postpartum depression, Alan is led to the insinuating admonitions of a neighbor. After careful negotiations, he agrees to come to a roadside motel, where Candy serves a home-cooked lunch and gently tucks him into his bunk. These scenes of near-marital life are filmed so subtly and soulfully (so two lonelinesses met!) That Bergman would bite his elbows.
Soon, Alan realizes that, by being emotionally involved in a love affair, he deprives his family of the warmth it is supposed to be by law, and timidly tries to break up with Candy, however, giving her a choice – this penny is surprisingly decent, but not capable of any decisive action. Candy, once again beginning to feel something, is annoying to be rejected, but she exits adultery as carefully as she entered. And then in the quiet town of Wylie, where no murders have happened for a quarter of a century, the irreparable happens: Betty finds out about everything and takes up the ax (according to Candy, 41 blows with this same ax was self-defense).
When Alan, who has been away on a business trip, learns of the death of his wife, he will say: “She always told me: the husband should be at home. And that when I leave, something will happen here.” When a neighbor of both families, a faithful parishioner, finds out about the murder, he will say: “I just watched The Shining, and here it is.” At a sermon dedicated to the tragedy in the community, the young pastor will say: “This happened not by the will of God, but by man, because man is a monster.”
So what was it about Candy Montgomery’s story that captivated screenwriters? Apparently, this is the most evil radiance, a sudden, inexplicable monstrousness, when in the midst of a quiet, blissful normality, a shocking, perverted abnormality suddenly appears. Or not all of a sudden. Maybe the essence of man is savagery, rivalry, aggression, and what we call normal life is just a carefully induced hallucination. Only the new series should be called “Dislike and Death”, since the latter here definitely comes from the first.
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