“Crime After Crime,” a feature-length documentary by Yoav Potash, about a troubled young woman, Deborah Peagler, who was convicted of homicide more than 25 years ago. This, after having asked neighborhood gangsters to make her abusive lover stop beating and terrorizing her. While a 2003 California law would only demand six years of her life in prison, her 1983 sentence took more than 25. This is her story.
Ms. Deborah Peagler awaits justice and freedom (courtesy Sundance)
Two lawyers, Nadia Costa and Joshua Safran, stepped up to take her case, pro bono, after a 2003 California law was passed that changed the game for victim/survivors of domestic abuse who are convicted of homicide, and free her. In doing so they found a sympathetic client, and a District Attorney’s office, run by Steve Cooley, that has committed and is committing “Crime After Crime,” as Mr. Safran described their conduct, to save face and keep careers.
When you picture justice, this isn’t it: not “Crime After Crime.” It’s a spectacular story, where the themes and stakes will remind some of you of the activist 1970s movie trend with such titles as 1980′s “Brubaker,” 1979′s “…And Justice for All,” and 1975′s “Dog Day Afternoon,” of the underdog.
Winston Churchill, an extraordinary political icon of the United Kingdom, once said that “Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms…” As it goes with that, so this seems to with justice: she was denied parole at least thrice. At one point Safran describes how the parole and appellate process work in ways, which ignore or preclude the convict’s promise for doing good. Ms. Deagler had been an ideal inmate, had earned a two-year degree, become a mentor to junior inmates and served far more time than 2000s laws demanded. So the case requires Herculean efforts even when the law, precedent and rhetorical are on their side.
Lawyers Josh Safran and Nadia Costa guide Ms. Peagler toward freedom, if not justice (courtesy Berkeley Side)
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office does so many things that clash with the public’s interests or Ms. Peagler’s. It makes you wretch and doubt America’s commitment to justice, or equal justice. Originally she was sentenced via a legal perspective that lumped women, who lash out is desperation at their abusive husbands or lovers, with those women who kill in cold blood.
The stakes, offenses and perversions of justice, and morals in this story make it a crackerjack whodunit. What makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand is that “Crime After Crime” trains its crosshairs, more and more, on the prosecutors misconduct. The DA’s office conceals a pivotal document, uses unreliable and impotent witness testimony and reneges on compassionate agreements.
California's masses support Peagler's cause (courtesy LATimes.com)
“Crime After Crime” boasts as many plot twists and is as fast-paced as a sweeps week episode of “Law & Order.” In some ways this is similar to 1993′s “In the Name of the Father,” even though that drama, which was based on a true story, exonerates justice in the United Kingdom. In both stories, convicts languish in prison for crimes, and with sentences, more heinous than the evidence warranted.
Ms, Peagler’s odyssey is even more trying and dramatic than another documentary, POV’s “Presumed Guilty,” from 2010. That indicts the Mexican version of justice – and a very non-Western. That candid and uncomfortable exposé provides excellent and telling comparison to Ms. Peager’s story.
Alongside being a splendid true crime drama, this documentary pushes us to consider several uncomfortable questions: what is justice? what color is it? why must it not only have a price, but one that makes our noses bleed? Finally, what do we expect from it vs. what America’s founders wanted us to expect from it.
With their enigmatic mom, Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), dead, her astonishing last will & testament sends her fraternal twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon Marwan (Maxim Guadette), who are Canadian, on an odyssey in the Middle East.
This is just the edge of the flame that is “Incendies,” from director Denis Villeneuve. Upon her death, Nawal’s will sends them to pursue another brother and a father – utter mysteries to them both.
Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Guadette consider mom's will in "Incendies" (courtesy Sony Classics)
“Incendies,” which is fire or flames in French, is a daring tale of family history & forgiveness that describes what ruins Nawal has left behind for Jeanne and Simon to walk through. It tells one mom’s life story while hinting at how her daughter might reconsider hers. This, while the pessmistic son, who feels none of the guilt, which he’s sure Jeanne does, just ignores Nawal’s final request.
The twins’ journey will upturn their lives and themselves. It might or might not reveal truths, which’ll hurt them, and change how they know themselves and their mom.
The film introduces Nawal as a young lover, pregnant and unmarried. In these circumstances, she shames her family and is shunned, and then is sent to a madrassa to be educated. After she goes through to college, and writes for the school newspaper, her political zeal leads her to an agonizing descent: she commits an act of political violence, and lands in prison.
The dusky light within Nawal becomes dark when she’s sent to jail for several years, languishing. Her agonies are so intense and profound that she hasn’t dared to confide to anyone. Upon her death, Jeanne and Simon grew up with the image of her a long-time secretary, no more no worse.
Nawal seizes her view to a kill in "Incendies" (courtesy Sony Classics)
Armchair soldiers often talk, with puffed-out chests, about the “glorious” realities & ravages of war. Her story reeks of those imprints – they mark her body, her life and herself. Those harrowing scars might just rival Sophie Zawistowska’s in 1982′s “Sophie’s Choice.” Nawal’s story, which only Jeanne takes on in full, shows the grimiest and grimmest of her life’s shadows. Nawal couldn’t bare herself enough to share these with her children.
One hint: the three dots on one boy’s or man’s heel tell 1,000s of words about Nawal’s twisted, unbelievable life.
One problem: Mesdames Azabal and Désormeaux-Poulin, and the geographic landmarks, resemble each other too much, so it can be hard to tell the difference between the scenes where mom walks her life or her daughter retracing those steps. We might not know what or how to feel.
“Incendies” is a witty and difficult film to watch; while some plot elements might sicken you, this story and its message are valuable.
“Love During Wartime” is a political “Romeo and Juliet” story for millennials. It’s a documentary from the Sweden and Israel, and director Gabrielle Bier. This is about two young artists, Jasmin, an Israeli Jew, and Osama, a Muslim Palestinian who have to fight against their home states in order to keep their love.
Assi and Jasmin in love, and against the state
Osama’s nickname is Assi. He and Jasmin fall for each other around 2007 and want to make it official, against the odds – generations worth of political angst. She is a working ballet dancer, and former soldier. He is a visual artist. Neither of their home countries can comprehend interfaith love.
The byzantine bureaucracy of each war-weary and wary country treads a paranoid path that reaches Kafkaesque levels of absurdity. This tense love story is very talky with meager action: the lovers either talk or argue with each other. Or Jasmin argues with or confides in her German parents about warring states and the stakes, or Assi does likewise with his friends. Assi and Jasmin struggle, loving and living separately for several months while waiting for either Israel or Palestine to treat them as people in love instead of wartime talking points.
Jasmin and Assi (courtesy Mpls St. Paul Int'l Film Festival)
Each of them visits the other under temporary permits. One time is in Germany: Jasmin wants him there so they may marry and he may become a citizen because she already is. And then he may start working. Just then he holds a student visa, lives off of her, and aches to work.
To some extent “Love During Wartime” resembles Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” from 1995. Except that the levels of political and social angst leech the fun from Assi and Jasmin’s love. Those tensions lift their romantic stakes, and the drama, above the banal ones that were involved in “Before Sunrise.”
This documentary is interesting and worth watching, although maybe it’s only “fun” for those viewers who really dig this.
“I Saw the Devil” is a South Korean a blend of police story and horror movie, which shows just how far from the law an aggrieved investigator, Kim soon Hyeon [Lee Byung-hun], can go in pursuit of a Hannibal Lector-like sociopath, after his wife is found dead. It opens when a helpless, fragile-looking young woman is depravedly attacked.
She is one of a series of similar college-age women, who this outwardly meek monster preys on. This plays at Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema for a week from March 11th.
If Hannibal Lector became a detective or if “Dirty Harry” were Korean, lost his moderate moral compass, and he ignored the phalanx of laws, which he’d sworn to protect, that’d be our detective. Our “hero” starts off with a presumed code of honor and universal righteousness. But after his wife is violated and vivisected…he changes, along with his life and world. What would Dirty Harry, or other heavy-handed detectives be like as badged avengers or vigilantes? Would you compare Korean detective to Charles Bronson’s character in the “Death Wish” series from the 1970s and 80s? Maybe. But he wore no badge. Plus, there was a load of other differences.
The way and style of the predator and prey’s cat-and-mouse game is great, but…by the middle of the movie it ventures beyond anything rational.
While there’s supposedly a market or a viewer for every film, “I Saw the Devil” is beyond this writer. The many scenes where the original criminal attacks and tortures his victims are brutal and disturbing. The detective gives him a run for his money in terms of depravity, brutality and predatory zeal. That raises questions about those heavy-handed, high-calliber detectives from 1980s movies. …But that’s for another time.
This experience raises a prickly, maybe enticing question: which one of them is more of the devil? “I Saw the Devil” is like watching a feature-length and graphic version of “Criminal Minds,” but this police horror movie gives us far fewer insights into the characters than that TV show does.
Well, he's not the detective. Maybe he IS the "Devil?"
There are viewers who just love this stuff. Apparently there are genres, which when a film critics discovers them, are a surprise and disappointment. Some viewers don’t merely enjoy seeing senseless perverse gore on-screen, they crave and revel in it. If story or character development test your patience, and you like scenes awash in blood, guts and brain matter and pathos, go enjoy “I Saw the Devil.”
With these faults, its high production values do satisfy. It’s shot handsomely and has a great score.
On March 4th Landmark Theatres’ Lagoon Cinema will show a peculiar old (1968) Japanese film, “Kuroneko” which, while set in the Feudal era, is disparate from the typical (Samurai) swords & sandals stories. Its quirkiness might interest you. It plays at the Lagoon for a week starting on March 4th.
This is a mystical story of vengeance in a land where war, starvation and toil have become common among the masses.
The movie is merciless, opening with an attack on a mom and daughter. Their aggrieved ghosts attack samurais and drink their blood – but they’re not vampires…even though they float through the air, when attacking. The vengeance tone reminds you of the 1978 exploitation flick “I Spit on Your Grave,” because of its justified man-bashing.
This is more about characters than a story.
The film’s last half is more concrete, giving us the son and husband (one man) of these women, who had already left the mom and daughter before the film began. He’s returned from battle, as a distinguished samurai. But the women’s blood lust for his battle brethren compels his samurai boss to dispatch him to kill those who are mysteriously slaughtering his troops. What’s an ambitious samurai to do?
“Kuroneko” is more about mood, mystery and mysticism than action or story. So, it’s a peculiar story of personal vengeance that turns into a different story of love interrupted. It’s a strange mix of genres.
If strange and mystical old films suit you, check this out.
If you love movies, if you love foreign films and festivals, but the inherent crowds irk you, then how about MyFrenchFilmFestival.com? Another way to watch foreign movies online. This inaugural film festival began on January 14 and finishes on the 30th.
Géraldine Nakache and Leïla Bekhti in "All That Glitters" (courtesy creative commons)
I tried to watch two titles, “All that Glitters” [Tout Ce Qui Brille in French], about two 20-something suburban women who yearn for Paris’ bright lights, and “Spies” [Espions in French] a story that asks “what if James Bond were brilliant and French, but also a misfit, slacker without patriotism?” Several of the 10 titles looked worthwhile. I say tried, even strove, because after 10- or 20-minutes even with a strong, reliable Wifi connections, the movies played as though they were under strobes lights –stuttering, clunky.
While this web-based film festival isn’t the first, or necessarily unique, it is different and special, but also damned irksome. Its predecessors are Babelgum Online Film Festival, which began in 2007, offering movies that mostly avoid or ignore conventional or feature films, and the New York Film Academy and PutItOn.com, which held their second online festival in 2010. Neither of these seem to offer the opportunity to watch foreign movies online. So maybe try MyFrenchFilmFestival.com?
Well, while MyFrenchFilmFestival boasts 10 films from emerging French feature filmmakers and many shorts, brace yourself for the internet headaches… People talk about payback. The problem is playback, even with a strong Wifi connection. With this inaugural online film festival, you waste more energy coaxing the movie to play than enjoying it. It’s a trial for a movie critic to review something that literally almost not watchable. You try to steady the clunky play back somehow, by making circles in the corner of your screen with the mouse, but…that’s tiresome, and futile. If you want to pause or come back to watching the film, too bad, so sad. – You’re screwed.
“All that Glitters” would’ve been a romp, watching these young women find their ways and a little bit more about themselves, and reconciling their suburban doldrums and fantasies about Parisian night life. It’s probably a good romp if the web system cooperates with movie viewers.
Then a few days after struggling to enjoy the story of this female duo, a surge of optimism came. How about another go of it, with “Spies?” It’s a strong, smart film that has a French version of James Bond, if he lacked the glamour or sense of service. The first half played well enough, making you want to stick with it, even if your attention was split between fiddling with a mouse and actually watching it. But when the movie starts playing more like a skipping slideshow, and the subtitles seem to fall out-of-sync or drop off entirely, you’re lost – Patience drained. Enthusiasm spent.
Nice try, maybe. This film festival, or this method makes it hard to watch foreign movies online. In how many ways can we compare this clunkiness to European politics?
Dec 10, 2010 marks 60 years since Ralph J. Bunche, Ph.D. became the first person of color to earn the Nobel Prize for Peace. He a mid-20th-Century icon, whom many – far too many – people have forgotten. He earned the Nobel Prize for his work in 1950 as the UN mediator who brought about the armistice between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, all Arab neighbor countries. In Bunche’s era, as much of an institutional insider as he was the “ultimate model Negro,” he was also seen as an “international Uncle Tom. An enigma.” Except for the last item, Mr. Bunche was Sidney Poitier’s diplomatic contemporary.
If you wonder about Black diplomat characters in movies, Secretaries of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, from Oliver Stone’s 2008 film “W,” might pop to mind. But Ralph Bunche probably won’t. Most Americans probably presume that the other two were the first renowned peace-makers of color.
Ralph J. Bunche, Ph.D.
Mr. Bunche has been described in many more ways: Mr. UN. Diplomat. Scholar. Professional optimist. Nobel Laureate. Enigma. African-American. Peacemaker. That final duo is the most remarkable here: He was the UN’s first black undersecretary-general, and the first black person to earn a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard.
The dearth of educated, cool-headed, urbane characters of color is a part of a chronic stereotypes that plagues North America’s culture, psyche and attitude: the black thug, or black buck. He is malevolent, barely educated and a committed criminal, often epitomized by at least one character in myriad “keepin’ it real” type homeboy movies, which had a zenith in the 1990s. The black diplomat’s image smashes that stereotype nicely, showing a non-violent, goal-oriented alternative to quashing conflicts. We just rarely consider these characters or their stories.
There are well-known films about Anglo diplomats, even though we rarely see those stories that way:
Fernando Meirelles’ 2005 film “The Constant Gardener,” adapted from John LeCarré’s novel, about a mid-level Foreign Service officer who investigates and scrutinizes his wife’s suspicious death across real and political borders.
Robert Harmon’s 2004 made-for-HBO film “IKE: Countdown to D-Day” recounts Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s diplomatic feat in orchestrating the joint force Invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord.
Stephen Frears’ 2006 joint European production “The Queen,” portrays the delicate diplomacy between both Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair as they dealt with Princess Diana’s death in 1997. It’s a compelling window into the taciturn world of the Royals.
But when you want to consider brown, black and beige diplomats in movies, there are slim pickin’s. Still there are some…engrossing, even atypical choices.
The $64-million question, “why are peacemakers of color, formal or not, rarely movie characters?” is best posed and considered away from here, amongst friends, over a meal. These portrayals don’t simply matter – they’re vital, so that those youngsters of color, who are curious and engaged by questions that cost them their cool points, or their street cred, can see worlds beyond their neighborhoods.
Let’s consider the few, which you can embrace:
Sir Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film “Gandhi” recounts Mohandas K. Gandhi’s extraordinarily and exceptionally patient toil toward India’s independence from Britain’s tyranny. Never
mind, that an Anglo actor, Ben Kingsley portrayed Mr. Gandhi… (shaking head – with vigor) He became more than a diplomat, transcending that over more than two generation’s time, to personify a cause.
Spike Lee’s 1992 film “Malcolm X” recounts Malcolm Little’s equally exceptional transformation: he grew from a Zoot suited hipster, through a period of self-education and ill-informed zeal for Elijah Mohammed’s version Islam, to someone, who after an epiphany in Mecca on a Hajj, commits to conventional Islam. After this, he acted as a peace maker. The film nearly omits this final phase.
Pete Travis’ 2009 British-made film “Endgame” tells a nail-biting story about the African National Congress’ [ANC] Minister of Information, Thabo Mbeki’s, negotiations for Nelson Mandela’s release and toward majority rule in South Africa.
Coming to terms with a South African black majority
As we consider commercial movies, we must visit a difference sort, the documentary, if we want to watch a film about this anniversary man: William Greeves’ 2001 documentary about him for PBS, “Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey,” makes the “Uncle Tom” and enigma questions clear, but also shows why Mr. Bunche deserves to be revered.
“Gandhi” begins with a surprise, Gandhi’s assassination. This convention biopic about this simple man who became much more than simply a man is difficult to compare to the others. The film’s style is very different from, maybe older than, the others. The scenes in “Gandhi” seem to cycle through sequences: he speaks, he then observes the masses’ response and he leads another protest and the government responds. This with increasing tension and peril.
Few people probably consider Malcolm X a diplomat or peace-maker, either in Lee’s epic film, or because of pop culture. With the movie it’s easier to explain: it had to move at a break-neck pace. Investing a mere three hours on a person, who’s formidable and potent legacy was four decades in the making, entails agonizing cuts in order to make a film that people will go to. The film has a “History vs Hollywood” moment, as in the History Channel’s program, because Mr. Lee omits the diplomatic outreach that Mr. X did in the wake of his pilgrimage, and while he was in the Middle East and North Africa.
His fiery, volatile rhetoric fell on conservative Anglos’ ears like merciless blows, while he was never connected with violence (Ossie Davis referred to this in his eulogy), his passion, wit and candor made him seem like he was.
The most potent peace making comes at the mid-point. And it boasts shock and awe: after a member of the Nation of Islam is injured while in police custody, Malcolm leads a march from that police station to a Harlem hospital, where he patiently deals with the police. An NYPD captain [Peter Boyle] confronts him about a mass – what the captain calls a mob – of black Muslims and an angry, raucous bunch behind them. Theirs is a professional, but brusque confrontation. After Malcolm dismisses his men, the captain declares, “that’s too much power for one man to have!” Ironic.
While the last 45-mins of “Malcolm X” takes place during and after the Hajj, all the peace making that Lee’s break-neck pace gives us was a news conference. He candidly answers questions about bringing charges against the United States to the United Nations.
Thabo Mbeki sits among the minority, asking that his people not be treated as one
The negotiations in “Endgame” between Mr. Mbeki [Chiwetel Ejiofor] and Prof. Willie Esterhuyse [William Hurt] were scenes of suspense without pyrotechnics, other than rhetoric. But that rhetoric held two people’s rights, freedoms and sources of pride at stake, or maybe for political ransom. In reality, while the film emphasized Mbeki and Esterhuyse’s coming-together, it also suggests that two other supporting personalities were at least as potent as they were: Willem de Klerk, Pres. de Klerk’s brother, and Michael Young.
In a YouTube video Mr. Ejiofor describes, a minute into it, how the director, Mr. Meirelles, chose to exploit the political thriller genre in order to grab viewers to what might otherwise be a piece about talking heads. This is a quiet and cerebral experience that demands viewers’ patience.
Even though there are three titles and three exceptional films that show brown and beige men as peace makers, the most recent one, and closest to feature-length, is also tells the most direct engrossing story of peace making work. “Endgame” is that. Far fewer people will sit down for a three-hour film experience. Patience is a quickly evaporating trait. But a political thriller that lets viewers peer through an oft-guarded window can win viewers.
“Private Eye” is a great, interesting, smart and amusing South Korean genre detective yarn from director Park Dae-min. It’s title in Korean: “Geu-rim-ja sal-in.” This story takes place in 1910 Seoul, South Korea. A former policeman, now private detective, Hong Jin-ho [Jeong-min Hwang], concentrating on typical, banal cases of cheating lovers, helps a young, talented and ambitious medical student, Oh Yeong-dal [Dal-su Oh] who’s in a weird – awk-weird – situation: this med student finds a dead body (some government official’s son) in a grassy area and brings it home so he can do anatomical practical studies – this, instead of calling the police!
Wow. That is ambition..! …and a gouge in his ethical compass – but this yarn (for amusement not forensic intensity) drives that detail for a chuckled and nothing more. Enjoy and escape with this film. Don’t consider it. Just sit back with some friends and watch.
If the director, Park Dae-min, chucked about two of the story’s twists, it would be clearer, simpler and that much more potent. And about 20-minutes shorter. Every time the yarn seemed to be two beats from its end, there seemed to be at least one more 10-minute sequence and a new twist opening up. It was like “this just in! – Another story and character twist! One twist involved a suspect who, while cunning and somewhat politic, also had a twin who seemed pretty identical. The array of twists wasn’t bad, but it was tiring, especially when one twist entailed sexual perversion that did nothing to advance the narrative, the characters’ stories, or the potency of either.
When you consider how many different people get giddy over Halloween (the event) and its namesake movie from 1978, you might ask yourself and your friends…”So how would you like to be scared today?” (Can you imagine being asked that question when you amble into a haunted house attraction?)
Fear isn’t a scream. Fear triggers your scream. Do you remember the tagline from the film, Alien, from 1979, (that I still can’t see as horror, but only as science fiction): “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Let’s consider fear expressed as sound. Many of us have discovered that the seductive and counter-intuitive magic that pushes us toward horror is sound, specifically the music or even the silence that precedes it.
Neil Lerner, a musicologist at Davidson College, and author of “Music in the Horror Film,” and, Steve Connor, the science editor for England’s “The Independent,” have identified some of the illusive kinds of music that creep us out, and keep us coming back to test our fight or flight reflexes. Some readers, thinking back to the 1980s, may debate the potency of movie music. The 1980s era was chock full of a compulsion toward shock, satisfying teens’ appetite for gore. There, entrails and brain matter abound like some moist, chunky and sloppy confetti of flesh. While gore does something for you, the music is probably the true engine of that tension.
Consider Halloween’s original theme: Nearly unforgettable.
As an example, from an article by “The Independent’s,” Mr. Connor, “Imagine a horn. You blow it gently and a nice sound comes out… At some point, when you blow it too hard, the sound gets unpredictable, distorted and noisy.” That’ll tweak or trigger your tension.
Do you remember what Albert Einstein, yes the genius physicist, said about imagination versus intelligence? The most potent tool in horror, and in storytelling in general, is imagination. The second most potent tool is probably how music gives us cues about how we should feel at any moment. The individual and personal ways that we take in and respond to that chaotic and distorted music determine whether we’ll be scared enough to pee our pants or scared toward a heart attack.
Now, the remix for the 2000s:
Familiar, modern and creepy.
As with almost every film, the music and sound design set the scene and the mood; but particularly so, with horror, Mr. Connor says in that article, “It was only in horror and drama that the scientists found a significant use of non-linear sound to amplify an iconic scene’s emotional content…”
When he discusses Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, from 1960, based on the novel, from 1959, by Robert Bloch, which was inspired by vague details about Wisconsin’s deranged Ed Gein, Mr. Connor said, “…the discordant musical notes he (Mr. Hitchcock) was adding to the disturbing shower scene were in fact based on the sort of non-harmonic sounds used in the distress calls of wild animals.”
From “the shower scene” (and don’t be like, “what shower scene?”) from Psycho.
Consider Psycho and Halloween – and if you’re an enthusiastic cinéphile, The Phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney, which flaunted its organ music – among a bevy of other horror titles. Neil Lerner, a musicologist at Davidson College, in Davidson, NC, and author of “Music in the Horror Film,” refers to “Horror film’s repetitious drones, clashing dissonances, and stingers (those assaultive blasts that coincide with shock or revelation) affect us at a primal level…” which harken back to privative instincts that ignore entirely however much education, breeding or sense of class you have. No matter how smart you are, that film, which ever one, will still scare the pants off of you. Here’s an interview with him, which includes a lengthy excerpt from the Phantom’s organ. But here,in a college article, Prof. Lerner discusses the kind of music that propels horror films and our senseless return to them.
Well, many of us have discovered that horror movie sound, specifically the music, helps those stories to make our hairs stand on end, and ourselves on-edge. I guess that’s part of why we’re crazy enough to flock back…for the love of Fear.
On August 13th, the Discovery Channel’s Investigation Discovery brings us Cropsey. Its trailer promises that this will be a cool and compelling true-life story. Cropsey is about missing children whose bodies haven’t been found, and ultimately the alleged abductor, Andre Rand. This documentary, supposedly a candid exposé of Staten Island New York’s very own bogeyman, is an amateur’s mess.
The filmmakers stand near the building that stands in for Cropsey
Amateur work can be worthwhile, but the key is how high of a quality you expect, and knowledge that amateurs do something out of interest, but haven’t the training for. The bogeyman might be real, but one of the few clear parts of the story is that there’s no physical evidence against their accused Mr. Rand, only the circumstantial type.
Cropsey begins by talking about a bogeyman who lurks in the woods, close enough to families for their children to be forewarned. I was psyched to watch a smart and well-executed film about a ghost story urban legend; about a bogeyman that wasn’t BS. Shortly after the prologue, it turns its attention to an institution, Willowbrook, which Geraldo Rivera’s reported on in 1972 and made into a villain for having warehoused the physically and developmentally disabled. That’s where the wheels fall from the cart. The institution and Mr. Rivera barely relate to this story, except with Willowbrook as a marker for a piece of evidence. The filmmakers linger on the topic for about 20-minutes.
The accused, Andre Rand, with detectives, for a "perp walk"
We watch the morose and disturbing stories about five missing Staten Island children, Hank Gafforio, Holly Ann Hughes, Tiahease Jackson, Alice Pereira, and Jennifer Schweiger, their five families’ agony, and the NYPD detectives’ frustrations and guesses over what might have happened, and whether the suspect did what they’re “sure” he did. Nothing is resolved.
I kept watching, waiting for the body of the film to have the thrills that the trailer and the prologue promised. I watched, waiting for things to make sense, and for me to have a reason to pay attention. After the messy and confusing investigation, Cropsey provides mostly speculation and suppositions, but no answers, or satisfaction. I don’t remember having heard a reason for either the name or the title Cropsey! This leaves you as empty as when Mr. Rivera opened Capone’s safe live on TV in 1986 – finding nothing!
This story is chilling because you can connect the children’s photos to the families who still yearn for closure. Confusion, frustration, and a slow pace stand out.
The story resembles the hodgepodge path that detectives walk while investigating, before cleaning up the files in order for lawyers to make sense of it. There’s meager if any reason for the sequence of investigative events that Cropsey shows. If the film were as well executed as the news release, then it might be worth watching. I want to see that film!
