Much Ado About Nothing

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

A Romantic comedy

  • Adapted and directed by Joss Whedon
  • From the play by William Shakespeare

It seems like a stupid question: Who could better adapt one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies to the big screen: Kenneth Branagh or Joss Whedon? The first is our generation’s Olivier. The second is known for movies and TV shows about spaceships, vampires, and superheroes. Yet Whedon’s new version of Much Ado About Nothing easily outdoes Branagh’s 1993 movie. And that was made when Branagh was in his prime.

Whedon strips his visuals down to the bare essentials. He’s updated the setting, with everyone in modern clothes, while keeping the original language and attitudes. He shot the film in black and white, in his own LA-area mansion, which easily passes for a modern Italian villa (the story is set in Italy and the main characters all high-born). The lack of spectacle encourages us to concentrate on the language, the actors, the story, and the verbal and visual comedy.

With it’s swift mood changes, the play can challenge any director. The first half, where Beatrice and Benedick (Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof in this version) trade witty insults while trying to pretend they don’t love each other, is a comic gold mine. But things get dark in the second half, as false charges of infidelity threaten the marriage of Claudio and Hero (Fran Kranz and Jillian Morgese), and the story veers towards Othello-like tragedy. But it’s also in the second half where Shakespeare introduces one of his funniest characters, Dogberry, a constable with supreme confidence in his own intelligence–of which he has none. While things get deadly serious for the main characters, Dogberry and his almost equality inept underlings help keep this play a comedy.

Twenty years ago, Branagh pulled off the funny first half brilliantly. But he blew it in the second by casting Michael Keaton as Dogberry and letting him go. His performance was so far overboard that he ruined every joke. He was about as funny as fingernails in your eye.

Whedon does much better here. Nathan Fillion (the star of Whedon’s short-lived Firefly TV series) catches the character perfectly. With his calm assurance and visible shoulder holster, he comes off as someone who has seen to many CSI shows and thinks he’s the smart guy in control.

Acker and Denisof also deserve kudos as two people insisting that they’re not in love. Their physical comedy (Acker takes a pratfall down a staircase) adds additional laughs to the Bard’s verbal warfare. Each insists that they will never marry, while their friends look on and know better.

The entire cast is spot on, but I’d like to point out one particular interesting casting choice. The evil Don John (Sean Maher) has two henchmen in the original play. Whedon turned one of them into a henchwoman, and made her Don John’s lover, as well. Riki Lindhome plays the part to the hilt.

The film has flaws, but they’re minor. Some of the men look very much alike, especially since they’re all wearing similar, conservative suits. And in one important area, Shakespeare’s story grinds uncomfortably against modern sensibilities. In 21st century Italy (or California), I doubt many put a too much value on a bride’s virginity.

I saw this film at the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival.

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Independent Cinema’s 1st Threequel: Before Midnight

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

A romantic drama

  • Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, & Ethan Hawke
  • Directed by Richard Linklater

This isn’t supposed to happen. You don’t want independent, serious, thoughtful, adult-oriented cinema to have franchises. Art is not expected to have sequels–let alone threequels.

And yet, the third film in Richard Linklater’s Before series is a gem–as good as the first, much better than the second, and a work that can stand entirely on its own. Even if you’ve never seen either of the previous Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy talkfests, you’ll still laugh, cry, and cringe at this study of a relationship in crisis.

Before Sunrise excited and amazed people when it came out in 1995. No plot, and no real conflict. (I described it at the time as My Dinner with Andre with scenery and sex appeal.) A young man and a young woman met on a train, then spent a day and night together, wandering the streets of Vienna, flirting with each other, and talking about their lives, hopes, and anything else. It was, and still is, the ultimate film about falling in love.

Nine years later, Before Sunset brought them back together. They had not seen each other since that night, but they clearly had thought a lot about each other. This time, they walk around Paris–in real time–while catching up. The film was alright, but it lacked the romantic and sexual magic of the original. Frankly, I objected to the whole idea. After nearly a decade of imagining what happened to these two, I didn’t want to be told.

But all that is forgiven with Before Midnight–the deepest and most complex of the three. Whereas Before Sunrise celebrated the giddiness of youth and new love, Before Midnight studies the joys, the conflicts, and the difficulties of a love that has become routine.

This time around, Jesse (Hawke) and Celine image(Delpy) have been living together for nine years, and they might as well be married. They have twins, a life together, and bodies transitioning into middle age. They live in Paris, but Jesse’s son from a previous marriage lives with his mother in Chicago. Jesse feels guilty about living so far from his son, and Celine most definitely does not want to move.

Like the previous films, this one takes place in the course of a single day, but they don’t spend it walking around a city. They’re on vacation in Greece, staying in a lovely villa owned by a British writer (Jesse is now an established and respected novelist). For the first time in the series, they have significant dialog with other people. They join three other couples for dinner, giving a chance for others to take part in the conversation.

They do get to walk and talk–but it’s in a picturesque small town and it’s only a small section of the film. They also talk in a car–a 13-minute single take that would have been technically impossible if this had been shot on film–and for most of the second half of the film, in a hotel room.

They’re clearly not as happy with each other as they once were. They fight. Celine especially lashes out, in ways that struck me as cruel and unfair (and not just because I’m a guy; at least two women in the audience had the same reaction). Both accuse the other of cheating, and each avoids rather than denies the accusation. You’re not sure if the relationship will last.

The result is both sad and sexy. You’re watching a couple who still love each other, physically and emotionally, deal with the realization that the love may not be enough. That can be painful to watch. And if you’ve seen the previous two films, you’re watching this happen to old friends.

I guess we’ll have to wait another nine years for the next installment, possibly called Before Noon.

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What Maisie Knew

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

A- Family drama

  • Written by Nancy Doyne & Carroll Cartwright
  • Based on the novel by Henry James
  • Directed by Scott McGehee & David Siegel

Full disclosure: I’m inclined to go easy on movies where a very likeable, good-looking, and essentially decent character has the first name Lincoln. Those of you named Bob or John probably won’t understand.

What Maisie Knew follows the aftereffects of a very angry, messy, and vindictive divorce between two selfish jerks who deserve each other. But their young daughter, Maisie (Onata Aprile), deserves and requires something much better than either of them.

As the title suggests, the film tells its story from Maisie’s point of view. We see nothing that she doesn’t see, or hear anything she doesn’t hear. Of course, we understand what’s going on better than she does. But the subjective style allows us to further empathize with this innocent human being so utterly devoid of power.

Julianne Moore plays Maisie’s monster of a mother. An aging rock star who hasimage probably seen better days, she’s incapable of relating to another human being as anything other than an extension of herself. She acts out her love for her daughter–in the opening scene she sings her to sleep–but she ripples with jealousy if the girl bonds with anyone else. She verbally abuses her husband within earshot of their child.

The makeup and costume department did everything they could to age Moore. Gone is the still-beautiful middle-aged mother of The Kids are All Right. Here, Moore looks old and worn out, as if she’d taken too many drugs, smoked too many cigarettes, and allowed her fear and anger to wear her down.

Maisie’s art dealer father (Steve Coogan) seems almost as bad as her mother. Perhaps he’s just as horrible, but he has less screen time  in which to make a bad impression. He’s certainly selfish and self-centered. One suspects that he fights for joint custody not so much out of love for his daughter as punishment for his ex-wife.

Both mother and father marry younger lovers, not so much on a rebound as to give them greater leverage in court. The father marries Maisie’s nanny (Joanna Vanderham), which is a step in the right direction. After all, she already has a close and loving relationship with Maisie, and she has considerable childcare skills.

But it’s the mother’s new husband, the aforementioned Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård), who has the most interesting and positive character arc. A bartender who improbably finds himself married to a rock star, he’s initially uninterested in his new stepdaughter. But as his irresponsible wife leaves him with more and more of the parenting responsibilities, he grows into the role, becoming the loving adult that Maisie so desperately needs.

Everyone in the cast is spot on, but I’d be unfair not to offer specific praise for the young star. At no point was I reminded that Onata Aprile was a child performer. She was, quite simply, a little girl caught between very bad parents, finding joy wherever she could. She carried the film.

The ending wraps things up a little too neatly, but that’s really my only complaint. This should be seen by everyone contemplating parenthood.

I saw What Maisie Knew at a press screening prior to its Bay Area premiere at the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival.

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Something in the Air: Radical youth of 1971 act out, then wander aimlessly

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

B Period drama

  • Written and directed by Olivier Assayas

Youthful innocence takes strange forms. For many in 1971, it took the conflicting forms of sex-and-drugs hedonism and radical leftwing activism. They didn’t always work well together.

In Olivier Assayas’ loose tale of French youth, the characters spend much of their time fighting the establishment and arguing esoteric bits of Marxist dogma. (In this world, Trotskyists and Maoists hate each other like Protestants and Catholics in the 16th century.) They’re also, to one degree or another, artists, and their artistic instincts don’t always mix with their political beliefs. Of course, because they’re young, they fall easily in and out of love, as well. That doesn’t always match their political theories, either.

The story centers on Gilles (Clément Métayer), a high school radical and a budding painter and want-to-be filmmaker. He seems quiet and shy, a watcher, although he’s actually quite active. He sells a radical newspaper to other students. He takes part in a protest that becomes a police riot, and then, with comrades, commits a couple of very serious acts of vandalism. After a security guard is seriously injured, Gilles and his companions decide it’s best to spend the summer laying low.

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The rest of the film follows his wanderings, and that of a handful of his friends. He falls in love. They travel a bit with a Communist filmmaking collective. He sells some of his work. He visits an ex-girlfriend in England who has slid into a dangerously hedonistic lifestyle. He works for his father–a more commercial and conventional filmmaker.

Something in the Air doesn’t grab you like a great film (or even like an entertaining movie). You often have to force yourself to stay involved. But the effort is worthwhile. As Gilles grows beyond his radical idealism–even if he never quite renounces it–you’ll find yourself appreciating how we all mature and find ourselves.

Like Gilles, I was in high school in 1971. My idealism ran more in the hippy artist direction, but I had plenty of friends who proudly carried their little red books. The political arguments in Something in the Air ring very true for the time. Yet the film wisely avoids nostalgia. There’s plenty about the early ’70s to be nostalgic about; spray painting schools and arguing Marxism aren’t among them.

I saw Something in the Air on a screener DVD before it’s showing at the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival.

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The Source Family

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

B+ Documentary

  • Directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos

Hippies, drugs, free love, meditation, spiritual quests, and Los Angeles-based vegetarian restaurants. You’ll find all of that in The Source Family. For me, the movie was downright nostalgic.

No, I was never a member of Jim Baker’s “family,” called The Source and the subject of this narratively-driven documentary. But I lived in LA in the early ’70s–a young, long-haired vegetarian in love with almost every aspect of the hippy culture. I ate at Baker’s restaurant, The Source, many times, and worked for a year in another LA vege eatery, Natural Fudge. I hitchhiked a lot in those days and met all sorts of people. I’m amazed that I never even heard of this group. (If I had heard of them, I would not have joined. Even at that age, I knew enough not to put total faith in a guru.)

Baker was a World War II vet with a history of violence and a good track record in the restaurant business. He started The Source, a very successful vegetarian restaurant on the Sunset Strip, in 1977. (Remember the scene near the end of Annie Hall where Alvie and Annie meet one last time at an outdoor restaurant? That was The Source, years after Baker had sold it.) He began experimenting with different religious traditions, and molded them into his own. Soon, he and his followers were living in a rented mansion and running the restaurant together.

You’d expect a documentary about an early 70s LA-based cult and hippy commune, centered around such a charismatic leader, to be an exposé–names like Charles Manson and Jim Jones come to mind. But The Source Family is a surprisingly the_sourcebalanced view of Baker’s “family.” Told almost entirely from the point of view of former commune members, the film paints a largely positive picture of early new age spirituality and anti-materialistic idealism. Decades after his death and the commune’s end, many of his followers still think of him as a holy man and refer to him as “father.”

Yet they, and the filmmakers, don’t hide his shortcomings. The hero worship went to his head–and to a less intellectual body part. Although his original rules for the group sanctified monogamous marriage, he took on multiple wives and put together a harem of very young, female admirers. Wille and Demopoulos don’t shy away from these negative character traits, or the disastrous decisions that left the community broke and despised in Hawaii.

Structured like a three-act narrative feature, The Source Family tells its story efficiently and engagingly. And musically–The Source had its own band, whose old recordings drive the movie’s soundtrack. If you’re interested in alternative lifestyles or new religions, or are just nostalgic for the Age of Aquarius, you’ll want to catch this one.

When I saw this documentary at the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival, it was called simply The Source. You’ll find more about it at SFIFF Report: Vegetarian Restaurants, Hippy Communes, and The Source. It opens Friday at the Roxie.

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Blancanieves: Silent Film Still Lives in this Spanish Snow White Tale

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

A- Silent melodrama

  • Written and directed by Pablo Berger

Could The Artist have started a trend? Less than 18 months after Michel Hazanavicius’ silent comedy hit Bay Area screens, here comes another brand new silent film, also in narrow-screen black and white.

But Pablo Berger’s very Spanish take on Snow White is as different from The Artist as Nosferatu is from The General. The Artist, a comedy about the death of its own medium, looks to Hollywood for its inspiration. Blancanieves looks to the more expressionistic silent film of Europe to tell a story that could not possibly have worked as well with sound and color.

This isn’t your typical Snow White. The movie is more than half over by the time the wicked stepmother decides to kill the heroine. In this version, her father is a famous matador, crippled on the day his wife died giving birth to Carmen. Of course he makes a very bad choice for a second wife, and eventually young Carmen must flee to safety.

Don’t expect nuanced characters here; this is straight-up melodrama. Maribel Verdú gets the best role as the evil nurse who marries the ex-bullfighter and makes everyone miserable. She chews the scenery,  exploits a young child, turns her chauffer into a sex toy, and happily murders her husband. And she does it all with relish. She can even bite into a chicken leg as an act of spiteful vengeance.

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The seven dwarves–also bullfighters in this version and played by actual little people–bring in a level of joy and playfulness. At least three of them have strong, interesting characters, including one who clearly pines for Carmen (now called Snow White after she’s left home) and another who resents her.

In fact, all of the film’s weak moments–the times when the melodrama gets too overwrought and predictable–occur when neither the dwarves nor the stepmother are on screen. But isn’t that the case with all dramatic adaptations of Snow White? The villainess and sidekicks make up for the boring characters we’re supposed to root for.

But even in those weak scenes you’re still dazzled by Berger’s technique. Like the best European silent directors, he finds exciting ways to spin the camera and to visually tell us what he doesn’t show us. A close-up of a phonograph or a dissolve from one face to another communicates plenty.

I mentioned above that this story could not possibly have worked as well with sound and color. Here’s why: Blancanieves skirts on the edge of fantasy, with broad, slightly-overplayed characters and an overt, visually striking cinematic style that wouldn’t work in a more realistic medium. (The obvious, literal fantasy of the original tale and the Disney version have no place here.) The lack of talk, color, and realistic sound effects sets the story in an artificial world, allowing you to accept the more far-flung aspects of the story and style.

Berger has one tool that the real silent filmmakers lacked: sound. Alfonso de Vilallonga’s musical score propels the action and sometimes makes you want to dance. The music, as much as the costumes and the bullfighting, makes this very much a Spanish movie.

I don’t approve of bullfighting, or other forms of animal cruelty. I’m glad to say that, with all the arena scenes in this film, no bull dies in the course of the story. I can’t promise that none were injured making the movie, but if they were, we didn’t see it on screen.

The story is familiar, but Berger provides plenty of surprises. In the end, he stands the whole Prince Charming thing on its head.

Early on, as the melodrama built up, I found myself wondering why I’d agreed to screen this film. By the end, I was totally enchanted.

Blancanieves opens tomorrow at the Embarcadero.

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Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

B+ Music Documentary

  • Directed by Ramona S. Diaz

Note: I wrote this review after seeing this documentary at last year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, with the intention of posting it just before the theatrical release. Then I filed it away and forgot about it. When the movie opened last month at the New Parkway, I remembered the movie well enough to mention it in my weekly newsletter, but I forgot to post my review. So here is the review its complete form.

I’ve never been a fan of Journey, but this music documentary made me a fan of the band’s new lead singer, Arnel Pineda. He’s charismatic, energetic, down-to-earth, and funny. He also has a great set of pipes. (I use the word new loosely. He’s going on five years with the band.)

Filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz tells Pineda’s story, the band’s story, but mostly, the story of how he became a part of Journey. It’s about as inspiring a tale as you’re likely to dont_stop_believinfind in the real world.. Band members, desperate for a new singer, found the poverty-stricken, Manila-based Pineda on YouTube, flew him out to California, worked with him for a few weeks, then took him on what became the most successful tour of Journey’s long history. At least in Diaz’s interpretation, Pineda’s wide vocal range, athletic on-stage antics, nice-guy charisma, and youthful enthusiasm brought about the band’s resurging popularity.

It also helped that he’s Filipino. The new ethnic and racial mix made the band more interesting, and made Journey even more popular in the Philippines and amongst ethnic Filipinos in the United States and elsewhere. Diaz, herself a Filipino American, introduces us to several unusually worshipful fans of Filipino heritage.

Pineda’s pre-band life in the Manila was anything but easy. His family was extremely poor, and for a period homeless. Eventually, his singing led to work in a cover band, which provided barely enough money to bring his family together and rent a small home. Still in his teens, he became his family’s main breadwinner.

Looking at him perform, or even talk to the camera in close-up, I would put Pineda in his late twenties or early thirties. But as he describes his past life to Diaz’s camera, it becomes clear that he’s been around considerably longer than that. According to Wikipedia, he was 39 when Journey called. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t fall into the usual traps associated with sudden rock and roll fame–he was already mature enough to avoid them.

Most of Don’t Stop Believin’  follows Journey on tour. We’ve this in other rock docs, but Diaz shows us more of the work that goes into music. We see Pineda doing voice exercises, and taking strict care of his throat so that he doesn’t blow it out. The closest this film ever gets to conflict or suspense involves a head cold.

That lack of conflict makes the movie drag at times, but Pineda has such a magnetic personality, and the story is so upbeat, that Don’t Stop Believin’ s infectiousness will catch you, anyway. It’s the ultimate feel-good movie.

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Lore: An Adolescent’s View of the Fall of the Third Reich

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

A Historical drama

  • Written by Cate Shortland and Robin Mukherjee
  • Based on the novel The Dark Room," by Rachel Seiffert
  • Directed by Cate Shortland

What happens when your entire world–wealth, security, parental love, and the values you were raised with–dissolve almost overnight? That’s what happens to Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), a teenage member of the Hitler Youth, when the Thousand Year Reich comes crashing down around her ears. But she doesn’t have much time to ponder morals or philosophy. With her parents gone–presumably arrested by American troops–she must lead her four younger siblings across a chaotic and destroyed Germany to her grandparent’s home.

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Luckily, she acquires a helpful companion. Thomas (Kai Malina) is a bit older than her, good-looking, and considerably more experienced in basic survival. He knows how to hide, steal, and get across a river. And the two are obviously attracted to each other. But Thomas has a number tattooed on his forearm, and papers that clearly identify him as a Jew. Lore isn’t inclined to trust someone who she has been taught to hate and fear.

We see the story entirely from Lore’s point of view. We know only what she knows–and whatever we knew about the Nazis before the movie starts. All she knows, at the beginning, is that her parents are very scared, and expect to be arrested by the Americans who have occupied their corner of Germany. (We don’t know what her parents did, but they’re enthusiastic Nazis with a very nice house, so we can assume it was something awful.) Her introduction to the Holocaust are a series of photos that the Americans require people to examine in order to receive rations. We don’t know exactly what Lore thinks about it all, but others insist that the pictures are fake.

Filmmakers Cate Shortland and Robin Mukherjee don’t let you off with easy moralizing. Many of the ardent Nazis are also decent, generous, even loving people–at least to other Germans. Thomas, while in many ways the most virtuous character, is a thief and arguably a murderer, and is responsible for the most horrible tragedy to hit Lore and her siblings. While Lore’s own prejudicial worldview seems to open up a bit over the story, there’s no heart-warming realization.

In one scene, Lore walks away angrily from Thomas and the young children, only to find herself facing a slovenly, pot-bellied, middle-aged man. Any moviegoer knows what to expect. He’ll attempt to rape her, and Thomas will turn up at the right moment and rescue her. That sort of happens, but in a way that’s far more morally ambiguous than what I just described.

The film was shot quickly with a shaky hand-held camera, almost entirely in close-ups. I’m usually not a fan of shaky-cam, but this time it worked. Many scenes started with a close-up, often of an inanimate object, forcing you to wonder just where you were–an effective technique for a film told from the point of view of a confused teenager with grave responsibilities, lost both physically and morally.

Lore provides an intimate view of evil, not from the point of view of the victim, but of someone on the verge of realizing what her parents and their generation had done. It opens Friday at the Embarcadero and the Shattuck.

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On the Road

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

B+ Drama

  • Written by Jose Rivera, from the novel by Jack Kerouac
  • Directed by Walter Salles

Note: I wrote this review last summer, after a screening prior to the Mill Valley Film Festival. When I was told that the film would open in the Bay Area on January 18, I set this review to go live two days before that date. Now that it’s already live, I’ve discovered that the local release won’t happen until March (maybe). I’ve decided to leave the review up, anyway.

Jose Rivera and Walter Salles came maddeningly close to making a great film out of Jack Kerouac’s highly-regarded novel (which I haven’t read). The sense of time and place are letter-perfect. The characters are rich, surprising, and believable.  On the Road captures the dizzy and seductive joys of a drug-soaked and sexually wild youth, as well as the less joyful results. But in trying to capture what I guess is the full arc of the novel, it bogs down at times, and the picture is marred by stunt casting in the smaller roles.

Full Disclosure: I have not actually seen the entire movie. There was a problem with the DCP used for the press screening I attended, and the movie froze at what I suspect was just before the final fade-out. (You film purists can stop snickering. I’ve seen many a physical print missing far more than this.)

The film concentrates on the friendship between Sal (Sam Riley) and Dean (Garrett OntheRoadHedlund), two exceptionally good-looking young men living a carefree, nomadic existence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They drink, smoke pot (and tobacco), go to jazz clubs, and sleep with a lot of women. Dean also sleeps with men.

The story is told through Sal’s eyes, and Riley is in nearly every scene. As I understand it, Sal is a thinly-disguised Kerouac, while Dean is based on Neal Cassady. For much of the film, there’s a third friend, Carlo–a stand-in for Allen Ginsberg.

Kristen Stewart (of Twilight fame) plays Dean’s sometimes wife, Marylou. If that sentence sounds confusing, so is their relationship. They’re newlyweds when we first meet them, but she soon leaves Dean and gets a divorce. Then she joins them again and is soon shagging both Sal and Dean. And no, jealousy does not raise its ugly head. There’s a lot of R-rated sex in this movie, and it’s filled with joy, lust, and youthful excitement, but there’s no real romance aside from the love between Sal and Dean.

But the constant travelling and dangerous driving, along with the odd jobs and petty theft needed to finance their adventures, wears everyone down. So does Dean’s complete lack of responsibility. He’s the sort of friend you can depend on to always let you down. He gets married a second time, with far more disastrous results.

Okay, everything I’ve said so far makes you think this is a great film. Why isn’t it one?

First, Sallas couldn’t resist casting big name stars in minor roles. These types of cameos work fine in a broad farce (as in Moonlight Kingdom), but in a serious drama, they take you out of the story. Instead of reacting to a new character, you’re saying “That’s Amy Adams!” Or Viggo Mortensen. Or Steve Buscemi. Or even “Oh, that’s what’s-her-name from Mad Men” (Elisabeth Moss, actually).

Second, the film runs out of steam about half an hour before it ends. The problem about people wandering aimlessly is that they’re not going anywhere. After awhile, you feel that you’ve learned everything you need to learn about Sal and Dean, and all you want is a fade-out.

To be fair, however, I wouldn’t drop the last three scenes–which do reveal some interesting twists. Even after the picture becomes repetitious and predictable, it can still occasionally surprise and delight you.

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The Central Park Five

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

A documentary

  • Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon

In 1989, a white woman was brutally raped and left for dead in Central Park. New York’s finest arrested five black and Puerto Rican teenage boys, all of whom confessed under police interrogation. Their confessions contradicted each other, and they all contradicted the physical facts. What’s more, none of their DNA could be found near the crime scene. Yet they were all convicted, and spent many years in prison before the real culprit, also incarcerated for other crimes, confessed.

Ken Burns made The Central Park Five (with two collaborators), but it is unlike any other Burns documentary. The events it chronicles are recent–and not entirely over. Burns’ usual, slightly nostalgic style would have been totally inappropriate for a story UNITED STATES - AUGUST 18: Accused rapist Yusef Salaam is escorted by police. (Photo by Clarence Davis/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)that feels ripped from the headlines, so he went for a tougher, grittier style. No movie stars supply the voices of long-dead historical figures. There’s no voice-of-God narration. The camera never glides over still photographs, although Burns does use that signature technique sparingly with court illustrations. And, of course, this is a theatrical feature, not a multi-part PBS miniseries.

But in one way, this is very much a Ken Burns documentary: It focuses on American racial issues. Burns has always been fascinated with our country’s original sin, slavery, and it’s still searing after-effects.

Burns and his collaborators start with a grim view of New York City in the 1980s. The crack epidemic had turned the city into a teeming cauldron of violent crime. The white, often affluent population was terrified, even though the vast major of victims, like most of the perpetrators, were black or brown. The city seemed ungovernable.

In that atmosphere, this particular rape produced shockwaves, and offered a high-profile way for the police to prove their worth. According to The Central Park Five, the police pressured and intimidated the scared, young boys into confessing to a crime they didn’t commit. Once they had the videotaped confessions, the prosecutor made sure the boys were convicted first in the press, and second in court. Needless to say, their parents couldn’t afford the type of lawyers who could have gotten them off.

Not surprisingly, the police and the prosecutor (who made her reputation on this case) deny these charges.  The only legal investigation into police misconduct here found them innocent of all wrong-doing, but that investigation was conducted by the New York City Police Department. Neither the cops nor the prosecutor agreed to be interviewed for this film.

The five themselves, all extensively interviewed, come off as intelligent, decent men who have suffered from the theft of their youth. Their personal stories (which are hardly tales of angels), and the stories of people close to them, give The Central Park Five heart. The rush to judgment that ruined their lives gives the film a sense of purpose.

Most Ken Burns documentaries help us understand how we, as Americans, got to where we are. This one shows us exactly where that is.

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