The irony of "inventing Anna" is that just like the protagonist at its center - it's all wind and ringing

Given the proven track record of super-producer Shonda Reims, it's surprising to see how much she fails to figure out what works and what doesn’t in her new Netflix mini-series.

With each episode, "Inventing Anna" illustrates that she has a hard time distinguishing between the main thing and the treatment, and at the end also makes a particularly outrageous creative choice.

Ido Yeshayahu

11/02/2022

Friday, 11 February 2022, 01:09

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Trailer for the series "Invent Anna" (Netflix)

In an estimate that relies on nothing but personal feeling, something like 90 percent of the series that come to television are based on a different source material.

A book, a graphic novel, a podcast, an old series / movie, or as in the case of "Inventing Anna", which airs today (Friday) on Netflix - a magazine article.

It happens that a particularly good series evokes a desire to test the work on which it is based as well, but the case of "Inventing Anna" is different.

For the first time in my life I wanted to stop watching and read the original, simply to clear up the tremendous and exhausting amount of background noise and smears that the new mini-series lays on an interesting story.

Vivian Kent (Anna Klamsky, "Whip") is a Manhattan magazine journalist who comes up with a fascinating idea for an article and tries to convince its editors to allow her to write it: a 25-year-old girl named Anna Sorokin or Anna Delby (the wonderful Julia Garner, "Ozark" ", With a strange Russian / German / Borati accent) was arrested and a huge indictment was filed against her for fraud, forgery and a host of other counts.

She impersonated a wealthy heiress from Germany who was just waiting for her mutual fund money, paving her way with counterfeit checks and bank transfer confirmations.

Not only has Anna managed to infiltrate New York's high society, but it has also toppled some of the city's largest financial entities and luxury hotels.

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The Chopin culture.

Julia Garner, "Inventing Anna" (Photo: Aaron Epstein / Netflix)

"She's all that bad in America today," the prosecutor tells Anna's defense attorney (Arian Moaid, "Heirs") about his legacy in the first episode, marking the mood of the series: a culture of empty pretensions that hide the truth, the essence.

This motif is already present in the opening - dozens of stylish Instagram photos of the characters in the series create the collage of Anna Delby's face.

Later, one of Anna's girlfriends, who is stung by her during a dreamy and expensive vacation, captures the facade of the traumatic event with smiling and false photos on Instagram.

Throughout the series Anna hangs out with Martin Shekley (who defrauded investors and was sent to jail in 2018) and Billy McFarland (initiator of the Pierre Festival, who also defrauded investors and was sent to jail that year, and won docu-films about his plots on Netflix and Hollow).

In other words, the series draws a clear line between the shuffled culture and the atmosphere that allowed Anna and her shoulders to do what they did.

The bitter irony is that "Inventing Anna" itself suffers from the same problem of the protagonist: noise and ringing that cover very little, an appealing first impression that collapses as the acquaintance with her develops.

In its early stages the series sweeps across all fronts: both in Vivian's stubborn attempts to obtain information through Anna's attorney, her wars with her editor and the assistance she receives from three reporters who seem to have passed their time and share a space with her in the system;

And both as we are slowly exposed to Anna's exploits.

But "slowly" is the key phrase.

With each passing episode, "Invent Anna" illustrates that she has no ability or desire to distinguish between the essential and the therapeutic.

The entire season counts nine episodes (all sent in advance for review) most of which cross the sixty minutes, and sometimes even reach 75 and 82 (!) Minutes.

The poignant feeling that this is a story that could have amounted to four hours of roofing, in generous appreciation, and that pecking becomes a hammer blow as it progresses.

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Do not pick the chaff from the bar.

Anna Klamsky, "Inventing Anna" (Photo: David Giesbrecht / Netflix)

"Inventing Anna" explores every path and alley in Vivian's travels and presents the angle of everyone Anna has ever said hello to, or at least that's the feeling.

Each of these experiences Anna a little differently, but in the end it is the same lady in a change of cloak, literally: Anna looks and feels like someone with a huge fortune, she lives in hotels and charges everything at the expense of the room, she is insanely generous - until it turns out she does not really pay About her stay and sometimes they - the ones who can afford it - are required to help her get out.

The series tries to refresh the loop by telling us the stories of these sub-characters, but the vast majority simply do not justify the number of screen minutes devoted to them.

Who cares that one of them wants to be a filmmaker and another pus to the remote squash court at his prestigious club?

Nonetheless, each of them wins at least an entire episode of its own, with castings of a few players who must get their pint of meat, like Anthony Edwards ("ER") and Eber Cox ("Orange is the New Black").

Each of these characters has different things to tell about Anna, only these things are exactly the same story, and with almost no differences in interpretation and conclusions that emerge from it.

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Everyone must have their screen time.

Anthony Edwards with Garner, "Inventing Anna" (Photo: Nicole Rivelli / Netflix)

Vivian's own character does not save either.

The journalist who wrote the article in reality is Jessica Presler (who also wrote the one on which the film "Fraud without Account" is based).

The real magazine in which it was published was New York Magazine.

The series changes these details - and many others - to allow itself creative freedom.

And so Vivian gets a background plot whose connection to the central motifs is remarkably faint.

She's pregnant so the clock is ticking, she has to redeem her professional name, she and her editor have bad blood and so on.

It seems nice, even overwhelming, until it turns out here too that the story revolves around its tail - another unnecessary distraction and lingering while everything is standing still.

Or at least that's the feeling.

But as a series about what she does, feeling is the heart of "inventing Anna."

It is crowded with familiar decorations from sting films, such as split screens, slow gears and generally rhythmic editing.

It is full of montages that instead of saving minutes just spread them.

Got it, you're surfing Instagram and liking all the pictures, God, why do you need twenty seconds like that?

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Feeling is the heart of the matter.

"Inventing Anna" (Photo: Aaron Epstein / Netflix)

And all this time, while "Inventing Anna" is stylized and strayed along for long episodes, she fails to decipher her protagonist.

This is the biggest failure of the series.

In fact, the more we learn about Anna the more puzzling she becomes.

Pretentious, narcissistic, living in denial, calling others "Basic Beach" and digging the pit for herself.

On the one hand she is smart enough to harness in her favor some of the most powerful people in New York, and on the other hand she repeatedly (because as I recall, it's the same story all the time) behaves with unbelievable stupidity.

So what's her point?

Who is behind the pretense?

Does she have a personality problem?

Does she even know?

These are questions that in themselves are supposed to arouse interest, and towards the end of the season even do it a little, but even then in a way that is far from satisfactory.

Because the series adds sin to crime: if most of the time the empathy of "inventing Anna" is given to Anna and her victims equally, in the end it changes at once - the series just chooses Anna's side.

Since she fails to crack the character experiencing her name, she also fails to convey to viewers the reasons for this choice.

Without revealing plot details - the final episode brings this matter to climaxes of ridicule.

The rest of the protagonists simply become a kind of enraged slaves of Anna, and most of all, their place - at the same time, the series simply makes fun of one of its victims.

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Same story in different variations.

Left: Lavren Cox, Garner, Katie Lowes, Alexis Floyd, "Inventing Anna" (Photo: Aaron Epstein / Netflix)

"Inventing Anna" is the second series produced by Shonda Reims under her multi-million dollar contract with Netflix, after the great "Bridgerton".

But unlike other works from recent years, such as the same period drama or "The Killer's Guide," this time it is the first series in a decade, that is, since "Scandal," which Reims creates and writes herself.

Given the super-producer's proven track record, it's surprising to see how much she fails to figure out what's working in the new series and what's not.

And if most of the time while watching one can still take solace in the trails of the intriguing story behind the inflated rhetoric, the scandalous choice at the end is the triumphant illustration of its complete loss of way.

One can only congratulate that the same victim, who will be forced to see here the daughter of her pathetic TV character, will get to tell her side with the help of a project that Lina Dunham ("Girls") is developing for HBO.

Nor is it unreasonable to assume that he will be more successful than "inventing Anna."

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