A KIND OF MURDER

US, 2016, 95 minutes, Colour.
Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Haley Bennett, Eddie Marsan, Vincent Kartheiser. Radek Lord.
Directed by Andy Goddard.

This thriller has a lot going for it including its being based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, The Blunderer. Patricia Highsmith has been popular with American filmmakers over the years, especially with Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.

The setting is New York and Newark, New Jersey, 1960 – the film opening with the marquee of the cinema featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Butterfield 8.

There are two concomitant stories in the screenplay. The film opens with a book shop owner, Kimmel, played by English actor Eddie Marsan. He leaves the cinema, enabling him to have an alibi while he kills his wife outside a diner on a bus route. The relentless Detective, Vincent Kartheiser, interrogates him, pursues him.

The other story is that of Walter and Clara Stackhouse, Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel. He is an architect who has built an affluent mansion. She is an estate agent, rich, temperamental, stylish in clothes, hair and make-up. However, there is tension between the two. At a party, she becomes jealous of her husband when he talks with a singer from Greenwich Village, Ellie (Haley Bennett).

Walter becomes interested in the Kimmel case, even visiting the shop and ordering a book by Frank Lloyd Wright. When his wife attempt suicide, also accusing him of an affair with Ellie, he says he will divorce her. She travels again to see her dying mother with Walter pursuing her but not finding her at the bus station. She is found dead in the river.

The detective pursues both Kimmel and Walter, seeing Walter’s murder as copycat of Kimmel.

While the two become intertwined, Kimmel takes a gun to pursue Walter and the detective but is shot.

A lot of commentators have been critical of the ending – and the ambiguity of whether all this is a realistic story or is, in fact, the product of Walter’s imagination and writing a short story.

Direction is by Andy Goddard who has made a lot of television in the UK and in the US, including Downton Abbey and Dr Who.

1. The title and expectations? The Patricia Highsmith novel? Original title, The Blunderer?

2. The New York settings? The city, the mansion outside the city? The bus routes north from New York? Shops in Newark? The musical score?

3. The colour photography, framing of scenes, close-ups and distance shots? The range of colours – and the touch of the lurid, of darkness?

4. 1960, the cinema with Butterfield 8? Costumes, decor, hairstyles? Cars? Affluent homes and interiors? Bookshops and their specialisations? Bus routes and diners? Police precincts and detectives?

5. The focus on Kimmel, going to the cinema, leaving, the opportunity for murdering his wife? The accusations? The newspaper articles? His work in the shop? Tony and his friendship, the diner, giving him an alibi? The detective and his persistent visits and accusations, punching Kimmel? His denials, living alone, his meals alone? Emerging motivations for killing his wife, her vulgarity? From Walter Stackhouse? The interrogation? The specialist book? The return visit with the detective, both denying knowing each other? His going to Stackhouse for blackmail? The docket with the address? The confrontation with the detective? The flashbacks to the murder? His gun, the shooting, his death?

6. Walter and Clara Stackhouse? Affluent, the mansion? Socialising and parties, the guests? Walter and his architecture? Clara and her real estate business? Walter and his short stories, publication? Clara not so interested? The tensions between them? Her mental state? Her agitation with Walter? Sexual needs? Her mother, illness, getting the bus to visit her? Preoccupied, not waiting to Walter?

7. The party, Ellie is a guest, talking with Walter? Later the visits, the liaison? Clara and her denunciations and taunts? Walter leaving, going to Ellie? Drinks with his friend and partner?

8. Walter, his scrapbook, interest in cuttings, in Kimmel’s case, the detective finding it, keeping it, showing it to Kimmel? The scenes with Walter at his typewriter, writing?

9. Clara, the attempted suicide, taking her to the hospital, the cover-up with influenza? The further phone call from her mother? Going to see her, Walter following in the car, not wanting her at the diner? Her body in the river? Recovered, the morgue, the identification?

10. The detective, pursuing Walter, Walter lying, gradually telling the truth about following the bus, the divorce, the meeting with Kimmel? The blackmail?

11. The detective, obsessive, relentless, the interrogations, the hostility towards Kimmel? Thinking that Walter did a copycat murder?

12. The end? Walter and his writing? Wishing his wife dead but not killing her? The whole story being real – or created in Walter’s imagination?