 |
It’s easy to commend Transparent simply for being. The new Amazon series from creator Jill Soloway tells with deep empathy the story of 70 year-old Mort (Jeffrey Tambor), who is finally coming out to her children as a transgender woman (she goes by Maura) after decades of hiding. That premise alone promises an immediate, progressive vitality in narrative, but the 10-episode debut season of Soloway’s semi-autobiographical series (her paternal parent recently underwent a male-to-female gender transition) extends beyond such sociopolitical value. The finished product is extraordinary in its artistry.
Transparent ultimately questions how lifelong crises of identity threaten our ability to be good parents, partners, siblings, citizens and people. It presents us with Maura, who with great sadness in the season's second episode tells daughter Sarah (Amy Landecker) that, for her whole life, she’d been “dressing up like a man.” As a father and husband, her repression led to questionable parenting choices -- to, for example, attend her first cross-dressing camp at the expense of attending youngest daughter Ally’s (Gaby Hoffman) bat mitzvah -- and prevented her from being a loyal, present spouse to now-ex-wife Shelley (Judith Light). Just as she is to finally confront her own gender identity, an outed Maura must face the effects that her emotional absence and unintended deceit have had on her children.
A Family in Transition
With each of Maura’s children in states of identity transition themselves, the conceit of Transparent is put into more resonant perspective. Sarah is in the midst of an affair with her college girlfriend, Tammy (Melora Hardin), less in response to her passionless (and heterosexual) marriage than to a belief that this is something she must pursue. She explains to her husband (Rob Huebel) that “this is me,” flailing in an attempt to convey her sexual confusion and altering sense of self.
Ally, meanwhile, tries drug-fueled threesomes and, when she learns that her father is transgender, her own relationship with a transgender man. In one of the series’ many instances of blending outrageous comedy with poignant drama, Maura outs herself to a high-out-of-her-mind Ally. It's provocative in its humor, but when Ally softly says that “It makes so much sense,” the words even still come out as truthful, enlightened and child-like, suggesting an understanding exclusive to a parent-child bond.
The middle sibling is Josh (Jay Duplass), whose relationship to sex and women is severely damaged due to a sexual dalliance in his youth with babysitter Rita. In the pilot, Josh makes a desperate marriage proposal after learning he knocked a client up, and then promptly (and not coincidentally) loses his job. His work to build himself back up in this first season is placed against a deep struggle to accept the new and true identity of his father.
Broadly, the distance between Maura and her children is both compounded and bridged as she begins living as herself. In its crucial flashback episode, we watch the chain reaction: Maura leaves her family for the weekend to live as her true self; Shelley, hurt and alone, leaves to spend time with her sister; eldest Sarah, in charge, leaves to assert her own identity, heading to a political protest; Josh leaves with the babysitter; and Ally is left all alone. It's that acknowledgment of role formation and stagnation that provides Transparent's crux.
Performing Identity
As Transparent rolls along, its reality seeps through: the experiences of this family -- of the parental failings, of the assumed identities taken on, of the layered culture of secrecy -- have profoundly and permanently affected each member. Sarah’s pattern of always seeking outside her partner repeats itself, Josh’s blind affection for a rabbi again puts in his mind an impossible and contradictory relationship, and Ally, no matter how many hats she puts on, cannot escape her struggle with emptiness and loneliness.
The greatest strength of Soloway’s writing is that she both refuses to disapprove of her characters and refuses to excuse them. The image of young Ally left alone in the house is simply shattering; the blame turns to Maura and Shelley, and even Sarah and Josh, for their unfortunate complicity. But Soloway leaves a precedent. Maura’s desire -- Maura’s need -- to go to that camp and express herself is no less genuine, leaving us with equal contempt for outside forces not allowing her to just be. The parental failings are well-documented, the childish behavior not excused: through such a compellingly realistic conveyance, we get a sense of the how and the why. We come to know these people, what they faced, and why they were and are so damn selfish.
In its imagery, Transparent powerfully and convincingly depicts identity as performance. Soloway’s ambitious direction of the eighth episode, “Best New Girl,” semi-violently cross-cuts a teenage Ally’s dismal attempt at seducing an older man with Maura’s romantic evening away with the wife of a cross-dresser, Connie (Michaela Watkins). Free, Maura is emphatically embracing her femininity. Ally, meanwhile, has no idea what she’s doing. Gaby Hoffman looks over her younger self childishly tempting the uninterested man; while Maura has finally emerged out of her performance, Ally is entrenched in her own.
That’s what so much of Transparent is. Ally’s total confusion as to how she identifies physically leads someone to mistake her as a lesbian; Sarah’s rather stoic body language and dress is aggressively contrasted with a far more comfortable, easily-identifiable Tammy; and Maura’s quiet bursts of excitement and of sadness are understood by the fact that she was performing, understated, for her entire life. Who she really is -- that’s terrifying, and the thought of it being rejected even more-so.
Universal Specificity
Transparent hits the big notes with affecting precision, but as storytelling it's also invigoratingly distinct. Rarely have I seen such an authentic, funny, generationally-specific interpretation of a Jewish family; the way their loosely-adopted faith binds them culturally adds texture to these characters individually and collectively. Whether Soloway is exploring faith or gender or parenthood or even race, Transparent has an uncanny ability to be funny about sensitive social topics without ranging into mockery, caricature or tepidness. It strikes an astonishing balance.
These elements come together to form a breathtaking portrait of personhood, from the messy world of familial and romantic connection to the indefinability of identity. It helps that Soloway elicits such terrific performances from every actor in the cast. Tambor, as its lead, resists every opportunity to go big or to go hysterical, and his embodiment of Maura adds something essential. Her identity is as much defined by her being a transgender woman as by her hiding that very fact for over six decades. In bringing immediate melancholy and nervous excitement to Maura, Tambor allows her to emerge with that unique complexity.
Complimenting her actors nicely, Soloway constructs Transparent like an independent film. It's intimate in its realism even as, wisely, she resists the urge to go to the shaky-camera, vérité staple of indie cinematography. Its look is cinematic yet close, with evocative lighting and a generous favoring of the close-up. Adding real emotional power to the production is Dustin O’Halloran’s soft, sweet and sensitive composition. It superbly aides in underscoring Transparent’s melancholic nature, and leaves both funny and dramatic scenes rich with feeling.
The Impossible Question
The season concludes with a cliffhanger, as Soloway leaves her characters in a state of chaotic acceptance. They are shaped by the past but in constant transition. And as the season comes to an end just as a new family member enters the fold -- his exterior identity so totally opposite from the blood relatives he’s just met -- all Transparent wants you to think about is: underneath that protective layer, who is he (or she, or they, or…) really? The simple answer, based on this first season, is to call that an impossible, ever-evolving question.
Grade: A