We really enjoyed Death by Lightning, Netflix’s popular history drama about the assassination of James Garfield by the coward madman Charles Guiteau. But it should have been one episode longer.
I’m indebted to Fiona for that insight — inspired by viewing the first episode, she dug into the case — all I did was read Sondheim & John Weidman’s Assassins, and I did that before. Guiteau’s trial was a crazy circus and it should’ve been dramatised. Asides from the horrifying entertainment value which is this show’s stock-in-trade, it was a major event in the story of establishing whether lunacy was a defense. Ultimately, of course, it proved not to be in this case, because the crime was so disagreeably heinous nobody was willing to consider any mitigating circumstance. It would also have been terrible fun to see Matthew Macfadyen, not only brilliant as Guiteau but a dead ringer for him, disintegrating further. As it stands, his plunge from being a kind of desperate, embarrassing psychopath into fullblown psychosis is just a tad too precipitous, I think.
Experts disagree on what exactly was the matter with Guiteau — the early episodes suggest a man with a bad personality, dangerously convinced of his own superiority and capable of basically any moral trespass if motivated by self-interest — a classic incompetent psychopath. His desperation to be recognised as having value is what makes him an uncomfortably relatable figure — as a friend said, he’s what we fear, in our darkest private moments, we might be like, or might come across as. But underneath, Guiteau is even worse.
Ace Shadowplayer Simon Kane pointed out, in an earlier comment, Guiteau’s likeness, as portrayed here, to KING OF COMEDY’s Rupert Pupkin, which is accurate — even if nobody had it in mind, and I bet they did, it’s a very apt comparison. The attempts to attain status by getting into contact with a prominent person, and then the switch to criminality when this fails… while Pupkin resorts to the “stupid” crime of kidnapping, still aiming for his original goal of TV fame as a comic, Guiteau opts for assassination, trying pathetically to paint his murderous acting out as a principled act of rebellion against a president who has betrayed his trust.
Asides from Macfadyen, the show has terrific work from Michael Shannon as Garfield (a nice change from his usual bad guy roles, tamping down his natural intensity without smothering it), Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham, and especially Nick Offerman, not only treading the knife-edge between outrageous farce and human credibility, but crushing it flat beneath the soles of his feet.
“The Netflix look” has been criticised online, but this show is free of blandness and overlit scenes — there’s a realistic sense of how dim lamplit interiors would have been. Some of the exteriors do look a bit Eastern European (Hungary was used) but the digital city extensions are, if not totally convincing, attractive and effective.
The only thing gnawing at the success of the historical portaiture is the dialogue, which is sometimes wilfully anachronistic. I can forgive “available wherever books are sold” because it made me laugh and was obviously intended to pop out comically, but it’s a slightly lazy laugh. The swearing is more of an issue. The idea seems to be that, as in Deadwood, modern swearing is used in order to have the appropriate impact, where archaic cusses might seem merely quaint. But we’re missing a couple of points here.
Lillian Gish once told a story about a man sitting behind her at a screening of one of her Griffith pictures, saying “Jesus Christ” or something to that effect, so dazzled was he by the picture. And so a couple of men took him outside and beat the crap out of him for swearing in front of a lady. And this was the 20th century. The fact that people once took bad language this seriously is an interesting one. I don’ think it’s the duty of the makers of period movies to bring the people up to date to make them more relatable. I want to be transported into the past, I don’t need the characters to meet me halfway.
Certainly it’d help the show’s conviction if the swearing, however modern, was confined to scenes without ladies present. And I don’t buy it when Crete Garfield swears, however satisfyingly liberating it feels. There’s a great moment in Patrick Hamilton’s Craven House when a wife berates her cheating husband — she wants to curse him, but the poor thing doesn’t know any of the words. So she calls him a brothel. “But I’m not a brothel, dear…” “You are!” “But my dear, a brothel is a kind of house…” “You are one just the same!”
Some of the script’s hints at modern political analogs for its story beats are quite neat, though. I do think people want that stuff — “Why this story now?” they ask. And so Mike Makowski, the showrunner, tells us.
He also expresses to us his discomfort at inventing a meeting between the Garfield widow and Guiteau, which clearly never happened. Crete tells Guiteau/us that her family don’t know she’s come to the prison, only the governor is in on it. This is clearly for no other reason than to ass-cover for the fact that no such meeting is recorded anywhere. (See also MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, ELIZABETH, etc.) And I don’t think it’s dramatically necessary, though the actors are great in it. I’m torn between feeling respect for Makowski for letting us know this is a dramatic invention, and mild irritation that he spoils his own illusion.
But nothing has to be perfect. I think the show is well worth your time.
Do McKinley next!
Death by Lightning stars tom Wambsgans; General Zod; Debbie Eagan; Dick Stensland; Dean Armitage; Ron Swanson; Silka Sharp; Sara Mankiewicz; Dr. Radek Zelenka; and Not Economically Viable Man
shadowplay 