I’ve been obsessed with the legend of Lizzie Borden for most of my life. As a young boy, I stumbled across images taken from the scene of the crime, of Lizzie Borden’s father and step mother hacked to death by a hatchet. It’s amazing what I could find in the adult section of my local library. It was real life horror, and to a 10-year-old boy, it was fascinatingly macabre. But the mystery — or in this case non-mystery — of who killed Lizzie’s parents after she was acquitted for the murders has always intrigued me. In the new film Lizzie, the story is once again explored, this time with a well-written script and some incredible performances, and the argument here isn’t who killed them, but why.
Lizzie stars Chloe Sevigny as the younger Borden daughter. She comes from an affluent family in a town outside of Boston. In 1892, her father Andrew (Jamey Sheridan) runs a successful business and is buying up foreclosed land from farmers, which makes him unpopular on the streets. Even his peers in the upper class see him as odd, as he refuses to flaunt his wealth, refusing electricity in his home and other luxuries. Inside the Borden house, trouble of another kind brews. Lizzie hates her step mother Abby (Fiona Shaw) and she and her older sister Emma (Kim Dickens) are in line for their dead mother’s wealth until a questionable uncle shows up and begins to meddle.
The Bordens hire on a new housekeeper, Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart), who quickly forms a friendship with Lizzie. Bridget serves as a catalyst for much of the drama to come, as Andrew takes a shine to the young irishwoman, and her purpose in the house gets clouded when her friendship with Lizzie blossoms into more.
This sets up plenty of solutions as to why the Bordens were hacked to death, and the script by Bryce Kass does a memorable job of twisting these various relationships and giving the viewers plenty of tools to draw their own conclusions. At the heart of Lizzie is a story that still resonates today. Her trial at the time was as controversial as the OJ Simpson trial, and she was ultimately acquitted of the murders, based solely on her social standing. She was arguably the first case of Affluenza, much like the vehicular manslaughter in Texas four years ago that saw a rich kid kill four people while driving drunk, but getting off because the judge reportedly argued that he didn’t know any better.
Director Craig William Macneill does a decent job of capturing the time period and the events, but a series of quick cut edits in the first two acts distract. I’m sure a film student would argue that Macneill was using the quick cuts to symbolize the same quick cuts that a hatchet to the face 40-plus times would do, but here, it forces the viewer out of the story. Scenes are not allowed to develop, and establishing shots are few and far between, save for the Borden house’s exterior, which is used too often. It hurts what would have been a fine presentation of one of the most sensationalized murders in our nation’s history.
Perhaps the best thing about Lizzie is the performance of Kristen Stewart, who really shows that she’s more than what she’s played in the past. She keeps her accent throughout, and when the murders take place, and she’s forced to convey emotions with her face and body and less with words, I was mesmerized. Chloe Sevigny has been flexing these kind of acting muscles for most of her career, but Stewart matching her, and in many ways exceeding the veteran actor in performance, is a sight to behold. These two actors carry the film and are one solid reason to watch, even if other parts of the production are lacking.
Lizzie does an admirable job in once again retelling the story of Lizze Borden and the murder of her parents. The story feels topical, even after almost 130 years, which says much about the world we live in. While the direction of the film stumbles, the performances from the leads keeps the machine going through to the end, and as the credits rolled, I was drawn back to those days as a kid scouring my local library for stories on Lizzie Borden and the murders that rocked the nation. For that reason alone, as a film, Lizzie is acquitted for its mistakes. It’s not like the first time she’s been acquitted for something as ridiculous.
Lizzie is rated R and is in select theaters on September 14th.
