\n<\/p>\n
Nine years after we first heard Robert Durst mutter \u201cKilled them all, of course,\u201d \u201cThe Jinx\u201d is back, with a new, six-episode Part Two that premiered Sunday on HBO. And why not?<\/p>\n
Maybe it feels unseemly, or like old news, with Durst having died in prison in 2022 after the original series helped convict him of murder. But a lot happened in the meantime. You can imagine that the filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, who directed both parts, felt a responsibility to a story he has now lived with for 20 years. And since \u201cThe Jinx\u201d has effectively erased the line between itself and the case it chronicles, you could hope that he felt a responsibility to examine his own role in the prosecution and conviction of Durst<\/a>, the wealthy and eccentric New York real estate heir.<\/p>\n That examination does not come in the four episodes HBO provided for review, but Jarecki acknowledges the show\u2019s continuing influence in a wry, \u201cCan you believe that happened?\u201d fashion.<\/p>\n It is noted, once again, that in 2013 \u201cJinx\u201d producers shared with prosecutors evidence regarding the disappearance and two deaths in which Durst was implicated, kick-starting the investigation that led to his conviction and life sentence in 2021 for the murder of his friend Susan Berman. The impact of the original broadcast<\/a> on the popular imagination is conveyed when a young law clerk recalls exclaiming \u201cKilled them all of course!\u201d at the mention of Durst\u2019s name, quoting his accidentally recorded words from the original series\u2019s chilling final moments<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This theme reaches an early peak in a scene filmed at a screening of that final episode in March 2015 in Jarecki\u2019s apartment, on the same day the fleeing Durst \u2014 who had been watching the show along with the rest of us \u2014 was found and arrested in New Orleans. Relatives of Durst\u2019s first wife, Kathleen McCormack, who had disappeared 33 years earlier, listen to his apparent confession with remarkable composure, probably acutely aware of the cameras a few feet away waiting to catch their reactions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That scene, more subdued than you expect it to be, is characteristic of the effect of \u201cThe Jinx Part Two,\u201d which is as fluidly and handsomely made as the original but, in the early going, lacks its strangeness and its surprises. Taking place after Durst\u2019s apprehension, the new episodes are largely a law-enforcement procedural and courtroom drama, rather than a twilight-zone exploration of Durst\u2019s life and consciousness. (Durst sat for 20 hours of interviews for the first series, but declined to speak with Jarecki for Part Two.)<\/p>\n Even more constricting is the self-consciousness nearly every character \u2014 prosecutor, defense lawyer, witness, journalist, Jarecki himself \u2014 brings to the screen. Everyone has seen \u201cThe Jinx\u201d; everyone knows how it contributed to Durst\u2019s downfall; everyone is in on the joke. And the wholesale intrusion of the show into its own narrative, while it can be interesting and sometimes amusing, is not, in these episodes, dramatic or moving.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Jarecki addresses this problem in several ways. One is to play up Durst\u2019s comic potential. The oddity that could be creepy and off-putting in the first series plays here, mainly in jailhouse videos, as more childlike and puckish. Durst models his prison uniform for a visitor, or gingerly demonstrates his workout routine. Everyone, including the prosecutors, calls him Bob; clerks relax by listening to his prison phone calls, giggling as each begins, \u201cThis is a prepaid call from \u2026\u201d \u201cBahhhb.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Another, more central, tactic is a focus on the Durst demimonde \u2014 the collection of aspiring scenesters, hangers-on and enablers who agglomerated around him because of his money (with which he could be generous) and the cachet his money conferred. Proclaiming their loyalty, abetting Durst in his machinations, barely suppressing their internecine jealousies and hatreds, and eventually ratting out one another and Durst himself, they provide most of the new installment\u2019s dramatic and emotional high points.<\/p>\n There are aspects of Part Two that are both familiar, in the wake of the original, and formulaic; easing our progress through them is the mastery Jarecki and his crew exercise over their particular brand of true-crime documentary. The melding of informal narration (often by the former New York Times reporter Charles V. Bagli) and live footage with meticulously staged snippets of dramatic re-creation is seamless. The material may not be as absorbing as that of the original, but the editing still gives it a pace and style that could be called rigorously hypnotic.<\/p>\n With HBO having held back two episodes (in 2015 it held back four), there is the chance that Part Two will supply a surprise of the magnitude of Durst\u2019s seeming confession, though it\u2019s hard to see how. We can assume that the last two episodes will include Durst\u2019s testimony at the Berman trial, and the playing of the \u201cKilled them all\u201d tape for the jury. Perhaps we will see Jarecki\u2019s unsuccessful attempt to talk to Durst outside a Louisiana prison, which he filmed with his phone. Perhaps we will hear Jarecki say something more introspective about the impact of the show. In any case, it seems almost certain that we will be back here in six weeks, talking about \u201cThe Jinx.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n