I’ll confess that, beyond the little nursery rhyme, I didn’t know too much about the story of Lizzie Borden, but it appears that much of what’s ended up in Craig William Macneill’s Lizzie is conjecture. So to catch you up to speed in case you never heard it, here goes: Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.
The resultant mess from this bit of New England gothic folklore are some of the first images in this gripping, well-acted and sharply-written low-budget drama. We then flash back six months, just enough time for Macneill to get audiences … well, I won’t exactly say cheering for the eventual act of violence, but at least understanding.
The Borden House is one of the wealthiest in their small Massachusetts town. Though it’s 1892, Andrew (Jamey Sheridan) has yet to have set up electric lights. “Father prefers it in the dark,” Lizzie says to a gossipy women when she goes out – unescorted! – to the theater one night.
Lizzie, a marvelous role for the abundantly talented Chloe Sevigny, is gasping for breath in that house, but her father is strict and her stepmother (Fiona Shaw) and older sister Emma (Kim Dickens) do little for her desire to be independent. Lizzie suffers from occasional fainting spells, and that’s all the excuse one needs for a woman to be considered unfit to make any of her own decisions. Quite frankly, the women with no illnesses don’t seem to fare much better. “We live in this world and not another,” a character later says about the preposterous idea that two women in love could ever live together on their own.
That woman is the new maid, Bridget (Kristen Stewart). Fresh from Ireland, she’s immediately dubbed “Maggie”, just to keep things simple. Lizzie, however, calls her by her real name, then starts teaching her to read. Just as Bridget gets into the rhythm of her work, Andrew suggests she keep her door open at night to let the air circulate. He proceeds to climb the stairs and, grotesquely, encourages her to “be a sweet girl”. There is no way for Bridget to refuse his advances.
The main stretch of Lizzie is a slow burn, showcasing the many insidious ways the cruel abuses of power (patriarchal power, specifically) can break the human spirit. When Lizzie and Bridget finally share an intimate moment it is one of the few glimpses of tenderness in an otherwise brutal film. But it just spells further doom for these two characters.
If the Borden murders went the way portrayed here, well, you’ve got to hand it to Lizzie for thinking it through. I’m not saying it’s right to hack your father’s face past all recognisability, but if you were going to do it, and in an era before you could watch CSI, her scheme was certainly the way to go. Whether you want to applaud when the deed is finally done is entirely up to you.
One thing’s for certain: Sevigny has been ripe for a juicy role like this for some time. It’s a shame she doesn’t get more opportunities. I noticed that Sevigny herself was the first listed producer for the film. Lizzie Borden, if she were to somehow come back as a Hollywood producer, would probably get a kick out of that.
