The Chill of "Top of the Lake"

Small towns full of dark secrets are a mainstay of mystery dramas and crime serials. We expect broken families, shady cover-ups, and a wary, insular community where the hero or heroine has few allies. All this applies to "Top of the Lake," set in the fictional town of Laketop, New Zealand, which true to its name sits at the top of a deceptively beautiful and dangerous lake. What distinguishes the seven episode miniseries is the involvement of writer-director Jane Campion, who created and wrote the show with Gerard Lee, and shares directing duties with Garth Davis. Campion is best known for "The Piano," and "Top of the Lake" is another insightful exploration of women caught in restrictive relationships and oppressive social roles.

Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) is visiting her dying mother, Jude (Robyn Nevin) in Laketop, where she grew up. She's drawn into the investigation of a local twelve-year-old girl, Tui Mitcham (Jacqueline Joe), who tried to drown herself in the lake and turns out to be several months pregnant. When Tui disappears, the main suspect is Tui's father, Matt Mitchum (Peter Mullan), a cruel, tyrannical man who lives with his grown sons in a guarded compound, and exerts a great deal of influence over the rest of the community. Other suspects include a convicted pedophile (Jacek Koman), and a boy named Jaime (Luke Buchanan) who was friends with Tui. The last people to have seen Tui are the members of a troubled women's commune, lead by a spiritualist named GJ (Holly Hunter), living in shipping containers by the lake. Robin gets some help from the police, chiefly her supervising officer Detective Al Parker (David Wenham). Matt's youngest son Johnno (Thomas M. Wright), who is Robin's old high school boyfriend, also comes to her aid.

The first several episodes are slow and moody, but when "Top of the Lake" starts picking up the pace, the revelations come fast and furious, with uncommonly strong impact. This is the most satisfying take on the "small town full of secrets" premise that I've ever seen, because all of these secrets are devastating, and never treated like they're anything but devastating. Usually there's an illicit thrill to learning the awful truth in crime dramas, but this is not the case in "Top of the Lake," where the central crime is the sobering rape and abuse of a twelve-year-old, and the goal of the heroine is trying to prevent the situation from getting worse. The writing is intelligent, and expects intelligence from its viewers. Many truths are implied rather than stated, and there are major loose ends that are never addressed, but we get enough information to draw our own conclusions. I also appreciated the very strong, emphatically female point of view. Laketop is dominated by a highly patriarchal social structure, and violence against women is common. Robin has to treat nearly every male character as a potential threat, a mindset I've never seen brought to the screen so well. Yet most of the antagonists are humanized and sympathetic to some degree.

All the performances are terrific, with Elisabeth Moss doing a superb job in the lead role. Robin is as damaged as anyone else in Laketop, something we only learn gradually, as old wounds are reopened and events escalate. The twists and turns of the plot are familiar, and would be unbearably melodramatic if not handled right. However Robin is assertive at work, but professional, able to consider Al and Johnno as potential love interests while keeping the investigation her top priority, and when she does become emotional, it's not self-conscious. She's reminds me of Gillian Anderson's Agent Scully from "The X-files," usually cool and collected, but able to summon some real emotional fireworks when necessary. And then there's the terrific menace of Peter Mullan's Matt Mitchum, whose violent rages and mercurial moods make him a ticking time bomb in every scene. We know that Matt and his sons are murderers from very early on, but the police have no evidence and the Mitchums are confident that they won't be caught, having gotten away with so many other unspoken misdeeds.

"Top of the Lake" is one of the most beautiful pieces of television I've seen this year, with its bleak, stunning cinematography of the New Zealand mountains and lakes and wilderness. There's something very old-fashioned and highly effective about its quietness and its lack of visual bombast. It gives Laketop an atmosphere of chilly unapproachability, and raises the specter of older, more primal fears. It's also one of the most ambitious shows, presenting thoughtful examinations of gender roles and gender portrayals, tackling sex and violence and victimization with startling maturity.

This is one of the first major pieces of original content to be distributed by the Sundance Channel, and "Top of the Lake" is a perfect match for their emphasis on independent and world cinema. I hope we'll see more like it.
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