The Staircase

The documentary keeps adding layers of complexity to the tale until one is entirely hooked by its ambiguities and twists and turns -- and soon, as with a great novel, one can't wait to see what happens next.

The eight-part feature, which aired on the Sundance Channel in 2005, is absolutely gripping and illustrates just how powerful documentary filmmaking can be.

It's a splendid piece of cinema-verite storytelling, fascinating, thought-provoking and dramatically clear, and no less popcorn-compelling for being leisurely and long.

It may seem ludicrous to say that a movie running more than six hours is well edited, but The Staircase, by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, is. And not only is the editing prize-worthy, but the whole film is also so brilliantly conceived, reported, filmed and paced that you may come to wish it were twice as long.

The Staircase is the scariest portrait of criminal justice since the nonfiction film that helped launch the modern innocence movement, Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line. It’s scarier, in fact, because The Staircase isn’t based on re-creations but on original footage, a front-row view of legal truth as it’s feathered into existence, manufactured from guesses and conjecture, and sold to a jury as more or less believable fiction.

There's a surprising amount of humor in the series, as when a sassy male prostitute admits in court that his client base included many professionals, including attorneys and at least one judge, but the series' power, gravity, and urgency come because viewers are never allowed to forget that a man's life and a family's future is at stake.

Makes a compelling companion piece to Netflix’s hit series in its remarkable similarities and considerable differences. On the most basic level, it’s like a proof of concept for the documentary serials that follow.