![]() It's never boring, but so much of it lacks urgency or tension. Yes, the deep dive into the characters' psychologies and backstory is fascinating, and the flashback episode is superb, but we didn't need five hours of context to get there, and at times, the plot seems to cease all forward momentum. The problem with all of this, is the runtime, which is two or three hours too long. The show unquestionably depicts him as a simpleton, but Lange finds more depth in the part. ![]() Lange leans into Lyle's inability to see just how much he's being manipulated, abused, and ridiculed, with his adoration for Tilly never wavering. Lange plays Lyle as blinded by ignorance and loyalty, convinced that Tilly still loves him, and he can weather the current storm. Dano focuses on Sweat's brilliant mind, playing him as calm and thoughtful, but prone to anger when things don't go his way. Del Toro plays Matt as a classic sociopath externally calm, but inherently volatile, and in the flashback episode, we see the extent of his sociopathy. However, she never lets us forget that Tilly is hateful, disillusioned, and dangerous. Arquette emphasises Tilly's naivete, leaning into her childlike quality seen in the tendency for her voice to become shrill and nasally, and to start crying whenever challenged. ![]() This episode also demonstrates her cruelty something which has been on the fringes of the character thus far. When we first meet her, her frustration levels with her husband Lyle (Eric Lange) are at breaking point, but in the sixth episode, which flashes back to formative moments from the characters' pasts, we learn that Lyle himself was once the same kind of escape hatch for Tilly that Matt and Sweat are in 2015. She plays Tilly as in a perpetual state of rage and resentment, a woman who feels she's entitled to more than she has. Yes, the physical transformation is laudable, but this is more than an impersonation. From an acting perspective, Arquette is extraordinary. Combined with shooting through windows and having the characters stand in doorways, the compositions visually signify that these people are fundamentally trapped, existentially if not literally. This format is almost never used on TV, where everything tends to be shot 1.78:1 (Master of None is an exception), but Stiller and Gagne use the format magnificently, with the narrow frame confining the characters. Also worth noting is that the series is shot in CinemaScope (2.40:1). The unedited format really sells the distance they have to travel and the extraordinary effort it took to get out. In the opening scene of the fifth episode, for example, there's a nine-minute single shot following Sweat from his cell to the manhole which they will use to escape. Aesthetically, Dannemora is exceptional, with director of photography Jessica Lee Gagne's work especially laudable. Written by Brett Johnson and Michael Tolkin, and directed by Ben Stiller, the series tells the story of the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape, when Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano) escaped the maximum security prison with the aid of civilian prison employee Joyce "Tilly" Mitchell (Patricia Arquette), who was involved in a sexual relationship with both men. Excellently directed and beautifully shot, with a quartet of astounding performances at its centre, the show tells a fascinating story, but it moves at a glacial pace that requires serious patience. Ostensibly a prison break drama, the series is more interested in the psychology of the people involved. And so we have the otherwise excellent Escape at Dannemora, a four or five-hour story elongated to eight hours. Except for one thing - "Netflix bloat" essentially, the phenomenon of shows stretching their stories too thin across too many episodes. So, with that in mind, in an era where long-form narrative has become the norm, I should be in my element. Overlong, but the acting is immense As far back as the late 80s/early 90s, long before "long-form narrative" became the dominant mode of television storytelling, I was a fan of what would then have been called "non-episodic storytelling", the best-known examples of which would have been Overlong, but the acting is immense As far back as the late 80s/early 90s, long before "long-form narrative" became the dominant mode of television storytelling, I was a fan of what would then have been called "non-episodic storytelling", the best-known examples of which would have been Michael Mann's Crime Story (1986-1987) and David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks (1990-1991).
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