Anyone who
has ever read a 19th-century Russian novel knows any of the following: they are too long, the character gallery is too large, they make unfoldings that a modern editor would have deleted without hesitation.
But in the end, the crowded whole often emerges as something grand, life-like.
Some episodes into Inventing Anna, the drama series about the Russian-born Anna Sorokin who deceived New York's financial and art elite that she was a German heiress and therefore could be entrusted with large sums of money, I think of the 19th century Russian novel.
Inventing Anna has too many and too long sections.
Scenes that are repeated forever.
No one but Shonda Rhimes had probably gotten away with this (the Bridgerton director's deal with Netflix is said to be worth upwards of $ 400 million and can perhaps be compared to podcast star Joe Rogan's deal with Spotify where no one cares that his episode is three hours long).
The series is based
on the article by journalist Jessica Pressler in New York Magazine who told a wider audience the story of the narcissistic Anna Sorokin who with confidence and cunning swindled large sums of money - scams she was convicted of 2019 and which gave her four years in American prison .
The main character in the series is the reporter Vivian, played by Anna Chlumsky, best known from the comedy series Veep.
It is through her eyes that the story takes shape.
The basic story
of betrayal and deception among the wealthy and beautiful is so unlikely that it becomes exciting almost by itself.
And Julia Garner, best known from the TV series Ozark, makes a fine portrait of the childish narcissist Anna Delvey - whose coolness is several degrees lower next to Anna Chlumsky's choleric and almost comic acting.
The series does
an excellent job of depicting the empty brand-fixed existence that Anna and her gang live in: it rains Instagram photos and the interiors of the luxury hotels and nightclubs feel insanely exclusive - not least during a fateful trip to Morocco.
But beneath the seductive surface, Inventing Anna turns out to have some shortcomings.
Anyone who
has seen Netflix's popular novel series Bridgerton knows that Shonda Rhimes does not work with subtitles.
The first five to six hours of the series are accompanied by terribly loud hip-hop music that explains in big letters what a "bad bitch" Anna Sorokin is when she burns her money at New York's most exclusive addresses.
And when you get a bit into the season, Inventing Anna so clearly takes the deceiver Anna Sorokin's side that you can not help but think about the agreement between the real Sorokin and Netflix, which reportedly paid around 300,000 dollars, ie three million kroner for the rights.
It's hard
not to start thinking about the details of the deal - has Sorokin demanded to be the hero of the story?
(I asked Netflix about the deal but got no response)
It does not help then that Anna in the series after a failed (or was it staged?) Suicide who, to invoke the strange novel's novel, begins to mumble about her compatriot Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Fiction has at that time proved loyal not to its characters but to real people outside it.
The story is
admittedly true in principle, but would probably have deserved a bit of the complexity that characterizes reality, or for that matter the Russian 19th century novel.