Roughly speaking, there are two types of Netflix original film. The first are the Oscar swings, idiosyncratic films made by big-name auteurs drawn by the studio’s seemingly bottomless coffers– The Irishman, Da 5 Bloods, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Mank. These films are rarely flawless, but they are fascinating in their unhinged scope, and I suspect much will be written about them as a body of work once the dust settles. Then there are the programmers: the films Netflix unleashes for the remaining 9 months of the year, complete with colorful thumbnails, photogenic stars, and a diverse smattering of keywords arranged to draw you in with something. These are the films you scroll listlessly through as you try to beat the autoplay; some attract a following (Always Be My Maybe, the Fear Street trilogy), but most seem to simply exist to pad out your watchlist.
There is a hybrid, of course: the Netflix Oscar Programmer. These films resemble the “safe” Oscar pictures of yore: respectable stars, stately cinematography, themes that are consciously “important” without ever being daring. These movies aren’t bad, necessarily– they’re generally well-made, well-acted, and thoroughly watchable– but they fade from memory by the time the statues are passed out. The Good Nurse is perhaps the quintessential Netflix Oscar Programmer; I can’t deny that I got caught up in it, but I find I need to bang this review out before it leaves my mind once and for all.
Based on a jaw-dropping true story, The Good Nurse stars newly-minted Oscar winner Jessica Chastain as Amy Loughren, an ICU nurse and single mom trying to make ends meet as she works toward a life-saving heart operation (in an all-too-familiar Catch 22, her health insurance won’t kick in until she’s been on the job a full year, but she’d be fired if her bosses knew about her condition). She receives a ray of hope in new coworker Charlie (Eddie Redmayne), a kind, soft-spoken type who offers to cover for her, slipping her meds during her episodes and, as their relationship deepens, helping her raise her rambunctious daughters. But as Charlie settles into his rounds, patients begin dying, in ways oddly disconnected from their actual maladies. As an investigation mounts, Amy begins to process that she may have forged a relationship with a seriously dangerous man– and that she may be the only person able to stop him.
A film about these events could hardly help but be at least a little thrilling, and The Good Nurse holds one’s attention like a good airport paperback. Chastain is in her element as a dedicated woman who needs everyone to get out of her way so she can FIX this (though she is handicapped somewhat by her character’s heart condition, which prevents her from going as full-bore as you’d hope). The proceedings are kept fleet and legible by director Tobias Lindholm (best known as co-screenwriter of the Danish Mads Mikkelsen vehicles Another Round and The Hunt, as well as several episodes of Manhunt and the crime procedural import Borgen). As the investigation escalates and the monstrosity of Charlie’s actions (and the hospital’s inaction) becomes more and more apparent, you might find yourself shouting at the screen even if you already know the facts of the case.
But while the story of The Good Nurse is intrinsically engrossing, visually it’s about as exciting as a hospital waiting room. Like many of Netflix’s non-auteur-driven productions, there is a curious flatness to the lighting, as if it was shot in an office meeting room with the overhead lights shut off to save money (it is established early on that Amy’s hospital has a lean operating budget, but surely times can’t be that tight). While I’m neither an insider nor an expert, my understanding is that Netflix imposes strict regulations upon its filmmakers regarding lighting, lenses, and shooting stock, resulting in the peculiar flat-brightness that makes so many direct-to-streaming releases look so distinctively indistinct (this sort of algorithmically dictated creative decision is becoming increasingly common as tech companies further control the gates of arts and culture). The Good Nurse is clearly aimed at the true-crime-addict set; one would wish it could be more visually engaging than a podcast.
It doesn’t help matters that its star is one of our drabbest working leading men. Eddie Redmayne is perhaps the current embodiment of the Oscar Programmer, having won for his predictably schmaltzy portrayal of Stephen Hawking in the capital-B Biopic The Theory of Everything and nominated for his increasingly regrettable turn as a trans woman in The Danish Girl. Redmayne is fine here– as award-hungry performances go, he’s certainly not as awful as, say, Jared Leto in The Little Things– but he’s neither as frightening nor as likable as the role demands; one can forgive Amy for not recognizing him as a psychopath, but it’s tough to discern what she sees in him as a potential partner and father figure to her children. Redmayne may have a great performance in him, but he strikes me as more the idea of a prestige actor without actually being a particularly compelling screen presence.
As a Netflix Original, The Good Nurse may actually be the platonic ideal: it’s absorbing enough to keep you glued to your couch on a lazy afternoon, and it’s just intelligent enough that you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time. But it can’t quite help but feel like content, like it was reverse engineered with that exact endpoint in mind. If someone asked me if they should watch it I wouldn’t dissuade them necessarily, but on a platform that is by now the exclusive home of dozens of daring works by some of our greatest filmmakers (as a reminder, there is a lost Orson Welles film hidden within those automatically generated menus) I wouldn’t actively steer them toward it either. My sense is that the age of the audacious streaming Oscar swing is coming to a close, and the future probably looks a lot more like The Good Nurse than Roma. We could do worse– but we’ve been doing a lot better too.
The Good Nurse
2022
dir. Tobias Lindholm
121 min.
Streaming on Netflix Wednesday, 10/26
