In 2015, during the Oscar campaign for Boyhood, an anonymous female Academy member told The Hollywood Reporter that she was voting for Patricia Arquette—who would, in fact, go on to win best-supporting actress—because Arquette didnt get any cosmetic procedures done while she was making the film she shot gradually over the course of more than a decade. “She gets points for working on a film for 12 years and bonus points for having no work done during the 12 years,” the voter said. “If she had had work done during the 12 years, she would not be collecting these statues. Its a bravery reward. It says, Youre braver than me. You didnt touch your face for 12 years. Way to freakin go!”
I wonder what that voter would say watching Arquette in Showtimes expansive Escape at Dannemora, based on a daring real-life incident at Clinton Correctional Facility in June 2015. Arquette plays Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell, a prison employee who became enamored of two inmates and ends up abetting their unbelievable jailbreak. The entirety of the cast is at the top of their game—including leads Benicio Del Toro and Paul Dano, who play the two inmates, and supporting players David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, Eric Lange, and even Michael Imperioli as Governor Andrew Cuomo.
But its Arquettes Tilly that steals the show. Arquette traps a delusional, sexual yearning in the body of a voluptuously trashy middle-aged woman—juxtaposing bad teeth and wire-rimmed glasses with desperate, clandestine fucking. Her sexual encounters with David Sweat (Dano)—who in the shows framing is her first and more serious partner—are perfunctory, seconds-long encounters where Tilly doesnt even take off her cardigan. Its hot—uncomfortably so. She switches gears from dowdy government employee to begging-for-it wanton so quickly, so seamlessly, that its de-stabilizing. And she escapes so thoroughly into her erotic fantasies that they blot out any perspective on what shes getting herself into.
In the miniseries, Sweat and Tilly have some kind of mutual affection, although Tilly regularly abuses her authority to maneuver Sweat into sexual encounters. But when Del Toros Richard Matt takes notice of their relationship, he sees an opportunity. Tillys desires, her self-regard like an open wound, makes her ripe for manipulation. Matt—a painter who greases the gears of the prison with his coveted works—is an expert manager of people, while Sweat is the reserved mastermind behind the plot to dig their way out. Using Sweats welfare as bait, Del Toro as Matt carefully grooms Tilly into first a sexual partner and then an accomplice, expertly tweaking her illusions as he wheedles more favors out of her.
These three performances alone would make Escape at Dannemora worth exploring, but theres additional appeal: director Ben Stiller, who in a departure from a decades-long comedy career onscreen takes another turn behind the camera. (He directed 1994's Reality Bites, 2008's Tropic Thunder, and 2013's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, among others.) Stiller, aided by cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, imbues the proceedings with raw, charged energy. (Though Escape at Dannemora is not comedic, Stiller's sensibilities peek through the seriousness: The whole series is scored with 2015-era Top 40 hits, because they're Tilly's preferred soundtrack at work.) The production had access to and filmed on location in Dannemora, New York, where the prison is located; some set pieces include the real-life hideouts and escape routes used by Sweat and Matt. Stiller has so much to work with that he can convey to the viewer the warren-like maze under Dannemora that the inmates used to escape—as well as the quiet solitude of verdant mountains they fled to.
But the wealth of resources has a downside. Escape at Dannemora is far too long; the seven-part miniseries includes a few installments that stretch past an hour, including a 100-minute long finale. Shot for shot, the show has moments that are astounding: the finale offers Matt, surrounded by greenery and golden flowers, balancing a shotgun before drifting through a clearing, with a tarp billowing behind him like a cape. But the pacing of the show overwhelms these fine details. (I assume that I am not the only viewer averse to spending long minutes watching Paul Dano sawing through walls.) Theres value to slow, careful storytelling, but in Escape at Dannemora, the pacing reads like an inability to edit.
Its perhaps more obvious because the narrative scope of Escape at Dannemora strikes an elegant balance between exposing its characters and making excuses for them—and, similarly, between examining the prison system and indicting it. Creators and writers Brett Johnson and Michael Tolkin do deft work adapting verified details into a fictionalized retelling, resulting in a story that leaves the viewer both very informed and deeply unsettled.
Its hard to wrap this unruly tale up with a neat ending, but Escape at Dannemora comes close: after all the struggle to escape, and the fantasies of freedom, the audience is left with a sense of loss, surveying the wasted effort that went into trying to realize Sweat, Matt, and Tillys bizarre dreams. All thats left is the deep foundations of the prison—and the discomfort of knowing, but not quite understanding, something very strange that happened within its walls.
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Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Sonia SaraiyaSonia Saraiya is Vanity Fair's television critic. Previously she was at Variety, Salon, and The A.V. Club. She lives in New York.
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