Val Guest last appeared in this column as the man behind the chilly and matter-of-fact The Quatermass Xperiment. In bringing the same precision to a more down-to-earth subject—a murder investigation in a down-at-the-heels offshoot of Brighton—he almost offhandedly crafts one of my new favorite police procedurals.
This is a case where the genre is all. Guest—who also wrote the screenplay, an adaptation of Hilary Waugh’s Sleep Long, My Love—is nearly relentless at throwing out anything that isn’t investigation, to the point where if the detectives involved want to shoehorn in any hint of personal lives, they have to speak quickly, and ideally only when on their way from one deductive task to another. If all this involved more traditional action, I’d call the pacing breakneck. Evidence, idea, refutation, new idea. It’s easy to forget the characters’ names, and that doesn’t matter. What matters is the process.
It’s an honest process, too, not jazzed up by any touches of the Gothic, the Grand Guignol, or even the Golden Age; there are no Hannibal Lecters here and no elaborate, clockwork schemes. The killer and detectives are all reasonably intelligent, but no one here is a Machiavellian genius. If the murder—which, off-screen, reduces a clinging, naïve, lovelorn woman to hackwork butchery at the bottom of a trunk—is squalid, the squalor isn’t dwelt on. This is an ordinarily difficult, ordinarily unpleasant crime that occurs for ordinary reasons and is solved by ordinary men. Instead of three-dimensional speed chess, we have a kind of rigorously applied tic-tac-toe. Eliminate this possibility. Call this number. Ask this witness.
In some ways, I feel like I’m emphasizing that Jigsaw does nothing special to attract your attention, but that unassuming quality is part of its charm. As our own Tristan J. Nankervis has noted, focus can occasionally replace more traditional markers of ambition. Jigsaw, as its name implies, is about assembling a puzzle piece by piece until the picture becomes clear, and it understands its goals so well that it ends exactly when it needs to: not with confrontation or comeuppance, but only with the last necessary fact slotting into place. The final moments are as rat-a-tat as the rest.
Anything beyond the puzzle, from seaside scenery to humor to human emotion, is used sparingly, like salt, and only to draw out the natural flavors of the investigation: Guest never forgets that the process of detection involves near-constant interaction with people, and people are a rumpled, self-involved, surprising lot. All this comes with the territory. Again, it’s honest without going all the way into eccentricity; like the docudramas it pulls from, it’s managed by a worldview, not a style. There’s a levelheadedness here that’s key to the appeal of this particular genre, which paints a picture of a world that can, with the dogged application of time and shoe-leather, be comprehended and set in order. This is how we do this. Maybe it’s not, and maybe it never was, but for the duration of the film, I believe it, and I feel more alert and engaged for tapping into this particular dream.
Jigsaw is streaming on Kanopy and Tubi. Thanks to Simon DelMonte for pointing me towards this one.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A worthwhile revision of a radio classic.
Anthologized
A solid punchline (but not enough punch).
Anthologized
Tune in to a world on the brink.
Department of
Conversation
Very glad you liked!
I’m really happy you brought my attention to this, because I’d never heard of it before!
Neither had I. Just roaming around the corners of Tubi you can find so many forgotten gems.
What did we watch?
Justified, Season Six, Episode Twelve, “Collateral”
“If that ain’t all of ‘em, you’re the first one to get shot.”
“Like the aligning of the planets, if those planets had guns and hated my guts.”
We’re on the way to the end. Realistically, Justified uses drama to generate philosophy the way I use pop culture criticism to do that; the final argument between Raylan and Boyd here is that in a nutshell, their central argument reduced to its simplest as they throw accusations at each other. Not many works pull off that attitude, and Justified mainly pulls it off by not taking it too seriously. We don’t really care who is right, which frees up any particular sentence to be right.
Everything about Wynn Duffy buying a getaway car – from the woman he’s making a deal with, to his request for a dog grooming van, to how he pays with jewellery he stored in a toothpaste container, is fantastic and classic Justified.
Raylan just giving his house away in case he gets killed is a baller move.
Biggest Laugh:“Oh, you know, scouring the scrubs for a dumbass.”
Biggest Non-Art Laugh:“Before you try to seduce me, know it’s been tried before!”
Top Ownage: Markem putting the boy down.
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Season Eighteen, Episode Three, “The Gang Gets Tested”
Another banger. The Charlie plot steps on the previous episode where he got tested by scientists over his intelligence a bit, but the basic gag works. Having Frank try and recreate a movie for a change is a good move, and the Chinese guy is really funny as a milquetoast comic foil to him. Funniest of all to me is Mac genuinely putting all his effort into studying, but I do enjoy Dennis having screwed the whole thing up from the start.
Utopia, S1E2 – Good yet the plot slows down a bit and there’s a ton of exposition in part because there’s so much story. Enjoying how hapless/stupid the character of Michael the government health lackey is; he’s a fly getting wrapped tighter and tighter into a trap. In contrast Jessica Hyde has some Trinity Syndrome going on as a badass perpetually on the run, and it’ll be interesting to see how much they can develop her character.* The twist here near the end suggests more layers to unravel. I hate how torture is depicted in 21st century media – until relatively recently – as a nasty, efficient way to get the truth. It doesn’t really work! Hell, the Kill Bill Volume 2 scene with actual truth serum is more accurate!
*Given how the Wachowskis rather understandably wanted to project onto a badass female character they identified with, I dunno if Trinity Syndrome is the best phrase anymore, someone come up with another.
Stranger on Horseback – In the Old West, a circuit court judge (Joel McCrea) arrives in a town owned and controlled by its founder (John McIntire), and discovers that the founder’s son (Kevin McCarthy) killed a man. All the judge wants is to make sure the son is brought to trial – and a fair trial at that – but the old man would rather keep everything in the family. A fairly straightforward and old fashioned western, but the game cast and solid work by director Jacques Tourneur and DP Ray Rennahan – plus a short run time of 66 minutes make for a good time. McCrea is to my mind one of the more underappreciated leading men of the 40s and 50s. And John Carridine is marvelous chewing the scenery as a Southern-born attorney in the employ of both the federal government and the big boss, switching sides as needed.
Elementary, “Art Imitates Art” – A woman is killed because a selfie she took in college (now on view in an experimental art installation) might prove someone’s innocence in a murder from then. The plot gets a bit twisty as usual, but the most interesting part by far is the discovery that a senior lab tech in Connecticut has been cooking the books to help the cops, since she is sure the cops have the right suspects and just need a bit of physical evidence to convince the juries. Last week, a friend said he prefers Sherlock to Elementary in part because the latter has too much copaganda. I can’t entirely disagree, but every so often we get episodes like this, that acknowledge how easily the system can be gamed by law enforcement, and while that doesn’t change the usual “Gregson and Hill are hero cops” theme, I am glad we don’t have the blind love of cops of a Blue Bloods. Meanwhile, we get the story of Joan’s half sister, and the two do not become instant friends, which feels right.
Barney Miller, “Ambush” – Someone calls in a false report and lies in wait for our guys, shooting Yemana in the butt. Meanwhile, first Barney and then Fish think about an offer of a job running the cops in a Florida beach town. The ambush plot is put together well, but turns into Chano and Harris feeling like the public doesn’t appreciate them. To the degree that people are throwing garbage at them! As I noted yesterday, times were sure different. And yet I would not say Chano insisting on a bit more appreciation is quite copaganda. The show likes cops, but it doesn’t idolize them.
Twilight Zone, “The Fever” – I CALL HIM GAMBLOR. This was a little one-note.
The one note bandit!
Stephen King cites this in Danse Macabre as one of his favorite episodes, and I’ve never understood him less in my life. Really, Steve?
Maybe he’s only seen three episodes
Year of the Month update!
This September, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1937.
Sept. 4th: Gillian Nelson: Moose Hunters
Sept. 6th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Lenin in October
Sept. 18th: Gillian Nelson: Pluto’s Quin-pup-lets
Sept. 20th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Hobbit
Sept. 22nd: Lauren James: Stage Door
Sept. 25th: Gillian Nelson: Donald’s Ostrich
And there’s still time to write up any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 2001 for this month!
TBD: James Williams: Millennium Actress
Aug. 27th: Cori Domschot: The Mummy Returns
Aug. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Walt Disney Treasures