Staircase

Year: 2004

Grade: A-

Country: France

Director: de Lestrade

Review

maybe the best courtroom/criminal justice documentary of all-time, can’t think of a better one except maybe the paradise lost trilogy. follows a man who is accused of killing his wife. she’s found at the bottom of a staircase dead with a lot of blood at the scene. was she beaten or did she fall? the plot thickens with every 45 minute episode of this 6.5 hour drama. yeah, it’s long, but it’s very compelling stuff.

the victim, as always, is lost in the shuffle as is the truth. everyone around michael (the accused) gets sucked into this thing, sides are chosen, politics, his sexual orientation, etc. all factor into the case in some way. i feel like these courtroom documentaries are like war films where the first casualties are truth and innocence. it’s a depressing work in the final analysis because each side is so tenacious in its argument, because things that shouldn’t be considered, are. because a family is torn apart, once again. because we’ll never really know what happened and yet so much is on the line. it shows, as if we didn’t already know, that truth isn’t obtainable and that people (on both sides) are blind to facts and arguments that don’t fit their views.