We see Hamburg listening to the 9-1-1 call from that fateful day, but we don't hear it ourselves having to record its effect only via a stricken son's face is powerful. Murder On Middle Beach is an unsettling watch at times. It's effective, and the audience's struggle to fit all the information into a cohesive hypothesis is a potent parallel with Hamburg's struggle to do the same. Hamburg's narrative chronology can be challenging, with various revelations or new-to-the-viewer theories feeling like off-the-cuff details tossed in to create episode cliffhangers, but even as I occasionally grumbled, "Wait, now you're telling us this?", I was riveted. Witnesses have axes to grind suspects won't speak without counsel present the police won't share information. ![]() Because Hamburg is basically becoming a documentarian in real time as he forges ahead with the series, he's perfectly positioned to tell the complex and frustrating story of his family without the layers of artifice a more seasoned director might have added.Īs the story unfolds in fits and starts, information and perspectives enter the narrative that simultaneously illuminate and muddy the bigger picture - a bitter divorce, a family history of substance abuse that calls memories and timelines into question, a female-empowerment pyramid scheme - MOMB illustrates, almost by accident, the difficulties that any investigation faces. Hamburg is trying to come to terms with his parents as flawed human beings, as we all do, but at the same time he's trying to determine whether one or more of those flaws led to his mother's murder. In the case of Murder On Middle Beach, it's this hybrid purpose that makes it so interesting. Even though a crime is at the heart of each production, and is its reason for existing, what's being documented isn't just the murder case, but grief and its aftershocks - the empty spaces, the search for closure that isn't ever coming. It reminds me of other deeply personal documentaries like Yance Ford's Strong Island and Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary that bear witness to the violent deaths of loved ones these projects are a distinct subclass of true crime. I should start off by saying that Murder On Middle Beach is very compelling, and I recommend it. Along the way, it raises some interesting questions about true crime itself. According to HBO's press materials, Hamburg's four-part docuseries is an attempt "to piece together her life story." But it's also an attempt to solve her murder - or at least to light a new fire under an investigation that's gone cold in the intervening decade. Madison Hamburg, the first-time filmmaker at the helm of Murder On Middle Beach, was only 18 when his mother was killed in March of 2010. Her weekly column here on Primetimer is dedicated to all things true crime TV. Bunting knows a thing or two about true crime. ![]() ![]() The editor-in-chief of the daily newsletter Best Evidence, Sarah D.
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