For a crime thriller, there’s nothing better than a group of people isolated from the rest of civilization. In Murder at World’s End, the series premiering on Disney+ on November 14, that classic isolated place from which it’s impossible to escape is a hotel with every luxury of comfort in the middle of freezing Iceland. A millionaire invites a select and diverse group of people to a specific retreat. One of the guests is Darby, a young hacker who devotes much of her free time to investigating unsolved cases, having accompanied her father, an investigator, to crime scenes. She accepts the invitation out of curiosity to meet the host’s wife, another well-known hacker who she admires. Shortly after arriving at this location, one of the guests dies under strange circumstances, at least to Darby, who suspects it was a murder.
After the disturbing and daring science fiction and fantasy story The OA ended in 2019, creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij thought about a change of direction. In the classic crime thriller, they found a way to bring together different characters with different backgrounds and ways of thinking. “When you gather them and start killing them, the story comes out,” explains Batmanglij in a video call on Monday, November 6th.
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The other root of this story, which is the origin of its protagonist, lies in an article Marling wrote for the New York Times entitled “I Don’t Want to Be a Strong Female Protagonist.” “If we want to write about strong women, we believe that the only way to do it is for them to be murderers or to commit violence through domination or violence,” explains Marling in another window of the video call. “Darby is our proof that a young woman can be strong and that her strength lies in her intellect and empathy.”
Emma Corrin, in the first episode of “Murder at the End of the World”.LiljaJons
“Another idea I had in mind when I wrote this article was not to perpetuate the image of women as victims,” the screenwriter, producer and actress continues. “When you watch a crime story, you usually start with a crime scene with a dead, pretty young woman, sometimes naked or scantily clad and covered in blood. It’s a very powerful image that drives the narrative. It is presented in a way that eroticizes the death of women. Then the detective must identify with the murderer in order to imagine the dark psychosis that led him to murder. We wanted to make the young woman, whose age and gender usually makes her a victim in the traditional narrative, our protagonist, go with her to crime scenes where she will have a different relationship with the victim because she is more closer to her than to the psychology of the murderer.”
The protagonist is not the only aspect with which “Murder at the End of the World” gives the classic crime novel a twist. The intriguing plot in Iceland is intertwined with a love story set in a completely different time – the past – and a completely different space – the United States of motels, dust and sand. “We wanted to combine two genres, there is the classic crime thriller [quién lo hizo]but also Darby’s origin story, which is actually a love story and a road trip [en un viaje en coche] while she and Bill [interpretado por Harris Dickinson] They travel through the western United States, two amateur detectives who, on their journey together, deal with an unsolved case and what happens to them. The crime thriller makes the love story on this road trip more exciting and the love story makes the mystery more emotional and weighty. “This type of cross-pollination was very interesting,” describes Marling.
Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij at a conference in Los Angeles in June 2019. Emma McIntyre (Getty Images for Netflix)
In both storylines, Darby is the protagonist, played by Emma Corrin, who finally breaks away from the role of the young Diana of Wales that she played in “The Crown”. “When you see Emma playing Diana you expect a certain person, but when you meet her you see that she is a completely different person, she is someone who can change even on a molecular level, it’s like whether Emma lives in Darby.” Zal Batmanglij describes his protagonist.
The plot, which takes place in Iceland, takes place in a near future that, for example, allows hotel guests to have a very advanced personal assistant controlled by voice. Artificial intelligence – or alternative intelligence, as the retreat host, played by Clive Owen, describes it – is a theme that comes up again and again in the series. Batmanglij is confident that people can take advantage of these technological advances. “We ourselves owe a lot to technology in our careers. And a new generation of filmmakers will be able to make great films from their own bedroom thanks to artificial intelligence. At the same time I find it exciting but also very scary. “I feel both at the same time: excitement and terror.”
Harris Dickinson is Bill and Emma Corrin is Darby in Murder at the End of the World.LiljaJons
In addition to writing and producing the series, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, who have worked together since they met in college, also direct the seven episodes. Marling took charge of three, the first of them, and was responsible for setting the aesthetic and tone. “It was important for me to create the feeling of mystery very early on and the feeling that something was waiting in the shadows. I also wanted to establish a pattern that defines how we move back and forth between the past and the present. For the part that was shot in Iceland, I had very specific color references, just using blues, pinks, reds and whites. The white of the snow, the blue of the ice, the pink of Darby’s cheeks and hair. “When we go back in time, we know we are there because the color is completely different, there is the burnt sienna, the blue of the sky and the yellows and oranges of the desert,” explains Marling, who also appears in the film the millionaire’s wife plays the series. Host in Iceland. In this interview, which was conducted during the actors’ strike, she could not be asked about her role as an actress.
Emma Corrin, in the first episode of “Murder at the End of the World”.LiljaJons
The joint work of Marling and Batmanglij has produced creative proposals in both film and television. “Brit and I create a world and we believe in that world before we share it with other people. There are many ideas that don’t progress because people doubt themselves too early, there is no room for creativity and innovation. I think fear stops many people from taking risks. When I work with Brit, that fear goes away and we just play. Replacing fear with play is what gives us originality,” he concludes.
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