Sundance 2021: Seeds of Deceit
sundance 2021Expanding her own 2018 short film of the same name, Miriam Guttmann's 3-episode Miniseries Seeds of Deceit continues the modern revival of true crime documentary series: telling the story of a morally corrupt fertility doctor named Jan Karbaat who lied to his patients and used his own sperm in operations. Rather than just being a deep dive into these disgusting events, Seeds of Deceit also focuses on the aftermath, as the families affected by this deception have to come to terms with these events.
This focus is largely the best piece of the miniseries, which is streaming as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Sadly, for the sake of the narrative that the show carries, Jan Karbaat died in 2017 before the film could pick his brain and gain his perspective in a relevant sense, so the options of what the film actually can say is quite limited. There simply isn't the material to transport audiences in a meaningful way back to the event itself, so focusing on the aftermath clearly was the right choice.
By giving these victims – both the parents who were lied to and the children who were born because of this – a voice, the series finds a deeper exploration on the concept of family that feels unique and worthy of being heard. It is legitimately powerful to hear these individuals be vulnerable regarding the emotional roller coasters this situation has put them on, and the emotion is clearly authentic. Having so many subjects to pull from in interviews, it also is compelling to see the individual takes from each subject and how different the reactions can be. While some condemn Karbaat, some find forgiveness and wish that they could know him and understand who their biological father was. There are no easy answers and even less avenues for true closure within this conversation and these complex emotions, but still it is compelling and raw in the best of ways.
Sadly, whilst there is this strong emotional backbone, the series clearly struggles in organisation and pacing. By the end of the series, the biggest question it leaves the audience with is simply why it was made as a series at all. Even at just 3 episodes that are around 40-minutes each, the show really struggles to fill its time and feel like it deserves this format. By skipping over most of the actual events themselves, the show introduces most of its subjects and brings them together with the drama of a court case which would allow them to test their DNA with that of Karbaat by the middle of the second episode, leaving the show to twiddle its thumbs and simply fill as much time as possible with white noise. Clearly this story would be greatly improved if it was told in a clean 80-minute documentary, but as a series, it simply doesn't work that well.
Though there is a strong emotional backbone within Seeds of Deceit, the show really struggles simply due to its format. Miriam Guttmann obviously concluded that the story was larger than it actually was, leading to an awkward and drawn out documentary miniseries that simply feels boring by the end. There are compelling moments throughout, but these are scattered and, even for the biggest fans of true crime documentaries, Seeds of Deceit will more than likely stand out as a step down compared to what the rest of the genre has to offer.
