As far as true-crime stories go, The Staircase is a doozy. A Schroeder stairs-meets-Schrödinger’s cat of a mystery.
The Staircase may be the most forceful elevator commercial. Watching Toni Collette fall down the stairs in different horrifying ways to the same deathly result may put a hesitant pause in your own step and make you hold on to the handrails a little tighter. The staircase is a place and a character, a crime scene and a killer waiting in the shadows in the HBO Max miniseries. Collette plays Kathleen Peterson, a telecom executive who was found dead at the bottom of the staircase in her North Carolina home in 2001. Charged and convicted for her murder was Kathleen’s husband, the novelist Michael Peterson, played by Colin Firth. Was he innocent as he continued to maintain or was he guilty as the jury believed him to be? Michael’s trial put the American legal system itself on trial in Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s Peabody Award-winning docuseries, which has now been turned into an eight-part dramatization by Antonio Campos.
As far as true-crime stories go, it’s a doozy. A Schroeder stairs-meets-Schrödinger’s cat of a mystery. What at first may appear to be unambiguous turns out to be anything but. The presentation of alternate perspectives forces a Gestalt shift, challenging our interpretation of the events. For those who have watched the original docuseries, the new show may either shatter our presumptions about Michael’s guilt or innocence, or affirm them. In the desire to be as objective as he can, Campos stages forensic recreations of the many theories surrounding Kathleen’s death. The case for murder as argued by the prosecution: a violent argument broke out after she found pornographic images on his computer and confronted him about his affairs with men. The case for an accident as argued by the defence: she was tired, may have had a little too much to drink, and fell down.
It’s this version that disturbs the most because of the everyday nature of its horror. We watch as Kathleen climbs just a few steps from ground level, slips and falls backwards, hits her head on edge of the frame, loses her consciousness for half a minute, wakes up, tries to stand up, slips in a pool of her own blood, hits her head a second time, coughs, calls out for Michael who is too far to hear her, and chokes to death. The show also plays out the owl theory presented by Peterson’s next-door neighbour Larry Pollard (Joel McKinnon Miller), who suggested the lacerations on Kathleen’s scalp were consistent with those caused by an owl’s talons. The question of truth, as it so often does in such true-crime stories, turns into a subjective guessing game for the armchair juror.
Given the evidence of Michael’s guilt or innocence isn’t conclusive, the question of truth is also besides the point in the nu-Staircase. For over 20 years, a lot of evidence has been pored over and theories put forth. Those who have watched the docuseries will recognise all the twists and turns the story takes. So, to give a new dimension and perspective to it beyond what we already know, Campos expands the focus to include the family at the centre of it. The fictional patina and twenty years of critical distance make it easier to explore what played out behind the scenes of the docuseries: the hidden resentments of Michael and Kathleen’s children, how the pervasive presence of a filmmaking crew impacted the family, and the wounds that opened up over the course of the tragedy, the trial and Michael’s imprisonment. In an interesting move, Campos makes the docuseries director de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon), editor Sophie Brunet (Juliette Binoche) and producer Denis Poncet (Frank Feys) characters in the show to determine how the story became an international fixation, and played a part in the modern true-crime craze. As the show opts for a nonlinear structure, flitting back and forth between two decades, it may take a couple of episodes to orient yourself in the narrative.
“One piece of advice,” Michael is advised by his lawyer David Rudolf (Michael Stuhlbarg) before the whole spectacle of the trial begins, “Keep your family close. You’ll need them on your side.” But it proves easier said than done. Before marrying Kathleen, Michael had two sons, Clayton (Dane DeHaan) and Todd (Patrick Schwarzenegger), from his first marriage. He had also adopted two daughters, Margaret (Sophie Turner) and Martha (Odessa) Young), after both their parents had passed. Kathleen had a daughter Caitlin (Olivia DeJonge) from her first marriage. When tragedy strikes, it splits loyalties amongst the five children. Caitlin joins Kathleen’s sisters Candace (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Lori (Maria Dizzia) in the fight to get Michael convicted. Clayton and Todd stand steadfast by their dad. Margaret and Martha’s belief in his innocence is tested on the revelation of their biological mother having been found dead in the same circumstances as Kathleen.
Through Firth’s slippery performance, Michael emerges as a manipulative and magnetic figure, weaponizing loyalty to keep Margaret and Martha on a leash, cashing in on his sons’ desire for his approval to play them against each other, and exploiting Sophie till she is useful to him. His penchant for evasiveness and secrecy is best described by De Lestrade: “Even when I know that he’s telling the truth it can sound like a lie.” In the desire to control the narrative, Michael keeps every potentially scandalous detail to himself — be it his bisexuality or the matter of Margaret and Martha’s mother also falling down a staircase to her death — only to pretend like the detail was mere trivia once it came out.
The seemingly happy yet fraught marriage between the Petersons is chronicled via family dinners, neighbourhood get-togethers, and the odd argument. Flashbacks suggest Kathleen was the one keeping the family together, not Michael. She was the breadwinner and support system, but close to burning out due to the physical, mental and emotional toll of it all. Collette brings an affable presence and makes the weight of Kathleen’s loss palpable after her passing, as evidenced by how fragile the relationships between the children and Michael prove to be.
In the annals of true-crime storytelling, the original Staircase emerged as a formative text for the genre. It’s partly the reason why there is so much true crime in the air these days. While building on the story told by de Lestrade and his team, the nu-Staircase remains intent to neither turn the scales in favour of Peterson nor against him. Where its sympathies lie is with the children left behind whose family was broken and who may never know the whole truth of what happened that night.
The Staircase is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in India and HBO Max in the US.
Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.
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