GASLIT: Blu-ray (Esmail, Anonymous, Red Om, Universal, 2022) Universal Home Video

On June 17, 1972, five perpetrators, reportedly schilling for the Nixon White House, were arrested while attempting a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. In the resultant 2-year-long investigation, to devolve into something of a 3-ring-circus by the end, it became rather transparent that President Richard M. Nixon not only knew about this third-rate burglary beforehand, but had been the architect behind it, prompting an impeachment, eventually to lead to his resigning in disgrace on August 8, 1974. But even before Nixon was exposed, and then, ousted from power, his seat of authority was being playfully questioned from within by the one woman reported to have all the answers to questions no one, as yet, had even begun to guess at. That gal was Martha Mitchell – the celebrated ‘mouth of the South’ and the wife of Nixon’s Attorney General – John Mitchell. In the burgeoning age of tabloid journalism, Mitchell’s reputation as a ‘tell-all’ insider was assured in Washington circles, and, to reach an even broader audience via her regular, unscripted ‘interviews’ on the talk show circuit. The Nixon administration’s portrait of Martha as a second-string, fame-seeking loon kept her legitimacy at bay from the Oval Office…for a time. But behind closed doors, it infuriated the President and his inner circle as an obvious embarrassment with repeated breaches of White House confidentiality.

Much of this dirty laundry…and a lot more, for too long covered up as mere speculation about the woman, her gossip and the motivations behind it, gets its due in director, Matt Ross’ Gaslit (2022) – a Netflix miniseries costarring Hollywood heavy-hitters, Julia Roberts (in a complex and brilliant performance) and a barely recognizable Sean Penn (in a thoroughly compelling spin) as the unhappily warring Mitchells. Gaslit is created by Robbie Pickering (based on Leon Neyfakh’s podcast, Slow Burn) and it is the first genuine effort to tell the tale of a woman who, until this franchise, has been unfairly judged as an arrogant and silly human being, incapable of dignifying the truth without first to dunk it in her arsenic-laden cocktail of Southern wit and crass commercialism. Gaslit is a marvelous thriller, also to feature Downton Abbey heartthrob, Dan Stevens, herein ditching dashing and handsome for mousy ineptitude as White House counsel, John Dean, with Betty Gilpin, superb as his put-together, forthright and more ‘Washington-savvy’ wife, Mo, and, Shea Wigham as G. Gordon Liddy (whose performance occasionally falters into brittle camp).  

Gaslit covers the political quagmire that was Watergate from some fairly divergent and interesting alternate angles and theories, infiltrating the drama with more truth than fiction; all of it deftly scripted by Uzoamaka Maduka (who also served as the series’ story editor), Pickering, Amelia Gray, Anayat Fakhraie, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz and Alberto Roldán. Gaslit is also the first intelligent read on Martha Mitchell, herein presented as neither dotty martyr or fame-seeking Washington socialite, rather a complex, brave, occasionally terrified, though genuine soothsayer to disrupt the political pulse of the nation. The real Martha Elizabeth Beall Jennings Mitchell was dyslexic, fascinated by the arts, with aspirations to become an actress. Previously wed, then divorced from U.S. army officer, Clyde Jennings, Jr. a chance introduction to Manhattan attorney, John N. Mitchell, left Martha instantly smitten.  As Mitchell and Nixon’s careers had converged years before when their law offices amalgamated, Nixon appointed Mitchell as Attorney General after becoming President in 1968. Martha’s notoriety, alas, ran counterintuitive to her husband’s authority as all her stories came from snooping through his classified papers or by eavesdropping on his conversations. The media lapped up Martha’s stories. She became their darling – briefly - and much to Mitchell and Nixon’s chagrin.

But this is where the story gets ugly…some might suggest, spooky.  The Mitchells were on vacation in California at the time of Watergate. Leaving his wife behind with security agent, Steve King (presumably, for her protection, but actually to keep Martha in the dark about the brewing scandal) John Mitchell returned to Washington to engage in damage control. Martha’s curiosity, alas, would not rest. Discovering several tidbits to make for juicy gossip, Martha tried to contact her husband by phone, threatening her next call would be to the press. Martha then followed through with a late-night call to her favorite UP reporter, Helen Thomas. According to Thomas, the call was abruptly terminated before Martha could reveal anything and repeated attempts to re-establish contact thereafter were met with a cryptic voice on the other end informing Thomas, Mitchell was indisposed. Thomas then phoned John Mitchell in Washington. He downplayed the incident. Undaunted, Thomas put veteran crime reporter, Marcia Kramer onto the story. Kramer eventually tracked down a badly beaten Martha at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York.  Martha would detail for Kramer how her California vacation had devolved into a nightmare in which she was made a prisoner in her hotel suite, repeated drugged with tranquilizers by ‘doctors’ acting on the authority of Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert W. Kalmbach.

To mitigate the fallout from Martha’s claim, Nixon aides revealed Martha had a drinking problem (which was true) but also advanced the notion she was convalescing in a psychiatric facility in Connecticut. Defending her husband as Nixon’s scapegoat, John Mitchell quietly resigned ‘for personal reasons’ and Martha went on the war path against Nixon and his administration. The result: John Mitchell’s conviction for perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy in the Watergate break-in for which he served 19 months in a federal prison and, upon release, moved out of the home he once shared with Martha, never to speak to her again. It would not be until Watergate co-conspirator, James McCord’s (Chris Bauer) sworn testimony under oath in 1975, confirming Martha’s kidnapping and assault, that her badly weathered reputation would receive its reprieve. McCord also confirmed Nixon’s top aides, jealous of Martha’s status with the press, sought various sundry ways to destroy her. That same year, Martha was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Slipping into a coma, she died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City, age 57 - an anonymous donor honoring her with a grand floral arrangement, spelling ‘Martha was right.’

Not much of this escapes Gaslit. In fact, almost all the aforementioned gets at least ‘honorable mention’, while much of it serves as the crux for this 8-part miniseries. Given the whole nasty affair revolves around Watergate and the exposure of Richard Nixon’s complicity in it, Nixon remains a figure in shadow throughout this exposé. Martha’s story is the paramount one being told here. But it is not the only one. The other is the awakening of John Dean’s social conscience, buffered in a perilous tug-o-war between the edicts on high, filtered through John Mitchell’s office, and the dedicated protestations of Dean’s wife, Mo who increasingly values her husband as more than a political pawn.  Gaslit concentrates on the young couple’s private struggles, their awkward romance, and enduring devotion to one another, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, determined to tear them apart. The real John Dean was a somewhat disgraced private lawyer who later became chief minority counsel to the Republican House Committee on the Judiciary.

Rising like cream under the auspices of John Mitchell, eventually to occupy the post of the president's chief domestic adviser, Dean, CRP Deputy Director, Jeb Magruder and Mitchell then entertained several proposals put forth by G. Gordon Liddy for intelligence-gathering operations – the seeds of Watergate. After the break-in, Dean took custody of, and destroyed evidence linking the White House to E. Howard Hunt (J.C. MacKenzie) – the central participant in Watergate. Attempting a cover-up, FBI Director L. Patrick Gray (John Carroll Lynch) then fingered Dean as Watergate’s chief obfuscator, despite the fact Gray had destroyed crucial documents Dean had entrusted to him regarding the scandal. Wisely deducing he was being fitted as Watergate’s scapegoat, Dean refused to complete a report entrusted to him by the president, supposedly to detail all evidence in the Watergate break-in. Instead, Dean hired his own attorney and began to participate in the Senate investigations, directly accusing Nixon of the subsequent cover-up. Dean eventually pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and served four months. Disbarred, though far from disgraced, Dean rebounded as an investment banker, author and lecturer, penning several political memoirs.

Weaving all of these disparate plot points into a compelling, even a coherent 8-part docu-drama is no small feat. And while Gaslit has moments that seem either too scripted or just a tad too dull and draggy, most of what is here is superbly realized and helmed by talents functioning at the top of their game. Julia Roberts is extraordinary. Indeed, Roberts has come a long way from her Pretty Woman image as America’s sweetheart. Herein, she is playing nothing less than America’s crusader for the truth, to come from behind one president’s political agenda and desperate siege to sustain his survival. That the real Martha Mitchell did not live to see the day of her exoneration is, decidedly, the real tragedy brought to the forefront of Gaslit.  Sean Penn is impeccable as the ruthless, enterprising and vindictive pawn of the president. Penn gives a nuanced, tortured and brutally honest account of the anger-seething Mitchell who cannot stave off his wife’s proud-flying claims of political graft and corruption but also cannot come to terms with her clear-eyed view of his dishonorable profession. At one point, a deeply enraged Mitchell plasters his wife with a slap to which Martha returns the favor, informing her husband, “Even my mama can hit harder than that!”  Gaslit certainly smites of as wickedly ripe charm.

Arguably, we are living in the last gasps of bloat, rot, decay and fallout from the age of Nixon – an era in which regime changes at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. ever since have served as camouflage, the appointment of each new figurehead inside the White House, mere window-dressing, while the machinery of government churns in its own shadowy, rogue-scripted direction, micromanaged by unseen forces with a globalist agenda, more darkly purposed than we can ever know. Gaslit infers Martha Mitchell was at the cusp of exposing this ugly manifestation when her life ended on a distinctly sour note of mediocrity – hastening her legacy into premature extinction as a means of keeping the status quo alive and well. It is an interesting notion for sure, and one which has steadily been revealed to harbor more reality than deceit, as was commonly applied to her reputation - the grotesque Southern caricature of her own time – part, gum-flapping gargoyle/part ignorant and opinionated usurper of America’s governing class and its ultimate seat of power.  Gaslit instead tries to rectify this hermetically sealed, if dated public image of Martha Mitchell with the reality of an outspoken critic, bravely unaware truth, bluntly spoken, but especially in the face of demented political ambition, can never be allowed to proliferate, much less succeed.  

Gaslit arrives on Blu-ray via Universal Studios in a troubling 1080p transfer. The series is housed on 2 discs – 4 episodes per disc. And while this does not create any potential havoc with compression artifacts, the stylized color palette employed by cinematographer, Larkin Seiple proves somewhat challenging for this mastering effort. For starters, black levels are frequently anemic – registering more gray than black, and with a lot of crush exposed in night-time photography. The color palette is difficult to discuss as Seiple has saturated his images in highly-stylized hues of murky greens, azure blues, and warm oranges and reds. Flesh tones, as a result, rarely appear natural. Everyone looks as though they have endured some hellish sunburns along the way. Even so, the artifice here suffers from boosted color and contrast not in keeping with the original intent…at least, I think.  Comparatively, the Netflix broadcast of Gaslit boasted more naturally balanced – if still, highly stylized colors and contrast levels. These Blu-rays just look cartoonish by comparison. Adjusting contrast and reducing color saturation does not help, as the palette becomes muddy with indistinguishable – yet still tinged in garish tones. The first 3 episodes of Gaslit suffer more egregiously from this anomaly than the later episodes. The audio here is 5.1 DTS and adequate for this mostly dialogue-driven miniseries.  There are no extras. Bottom line: Gaslit is a compelling argument in defense of the mouth from the South – a woman, berated in her time as a needless and silly rebel with no cause, but whose time for reassessment and vindication has finally come. Julia Roberts and Sean Penn give the performances of their respective ‘small screen’ careers and the intelligently crafted/multi-layered screenplay only occasionally lets us down. The Blu-ray is a disappointment, however. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

0