`There's your version, there's my version and there's the truth,' is at the murky heart of Andrew Jarecki's brilliant and disturbing, `Roshamon-like' Shockumentary, `Capturing the Friedmans.'
I can't stop thinking about this movie, I've seen it 3 times and each time I believe something different. Like some cubistic courtroom nightmare, each character adamantly tells their version of the truth. The masterful way the filmmakers enlist the viewer as juror, carefully revealing the 'evidence', is at once courageous and exasperating, never manipulative. This is what documentary filmmaking is all about.
What phenomenal luck or fate, while making a movie about Magician Clowns who entertain at privileged New Yorkers children's parties (David Friedman did my sons 4th Birthday), Jarecki and his crew wound up capturing the Friedmans in a way they never could have imagined.
The rich film (not video) and lush score, juxtapose the harsh reality and hysterical blindness of justice, making it even more painful to watch. One particularly haunting scene, a tearful David, alone in his underwear, raging at some future viewer, is so visceral and intimate, you almost have to look away.
Perhaps David and Jesse are in some sense relieved that their truth is finally told. How fortunate they are to have stumbled upon such a noble facilitator as Andrew Jarecki. I met Jesse at a screening recently and was moved by his gentle kindness and David's choice to exonerate his brother over a successful career, is the essence of devotion. The courage of these brothers and of the filmmakers, should garner an Oscar and more importantly, set the record straight. This is truly filmmaking as healing art.
I can't stop thinking about this movie, I've seen it 3 times and each time I believe something different. Like some cubistic courtroom nightmare, each character adamantly tells their version of the truth. The masterful way the filmmakers enlist the viewer as juror, carefully revealing the 'evidence', is at once courageous and exasperating, never manipulative. This is what documentary filmmaking is all about.
What phenomenal luck or fate, while making a movie about Magician Clowns who entertain at privileged New Yorkers children's parties (David Friedman did my sons 4th Birthday), Jarecki and his crew wound up capturing the Friedmans in a way they never could have imagined.
The rich film (not video) and lush score, juxtapose the harsh reality and hysterical blindness of justice, making it even more painful to watch. One particularly haunting scene, a tearful David, alone in his underwear, raging at some future viewer, is so visceral and intimate, you almost have to look away.
Perhaps David and Jesse are in some sense relieved that their truth is finally told. How fortunate they are to have stumbled upon such a noble facilitator as Andrew Jarecki. I met Jesse at a screening recently and was moved by his gentle kindness and David's choice to exonerate his brother over a successful career, is the essence of devotion. The courage of these brothers and of the filmmakers, should garner an Oscar and more importantly, set the record straight. This is truly filmmaking as healing art.