In an attempt to get more people to watch this masterpiece I thought I'd post my review of Andrew Jarecki's compelling and harrowing documentary.
What’s not difficult when reviewing ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ is telling you it’s an extraordinary, fascinating and moving piece of cinema. What’s extremely difficult is reviewing it without telling you how I feel about the events depicted in the documentary, whether I believe the family we watch disintegrate are responsible for the shocking crimes they are accused of. However, since Andrew Jarecki has succeeded in depicting the facts without telling you what you should think, I will try and do the same.
Andrew Jarecki wanted to make a film about clowns, the kind of clowns that your parents hire to perform at your birthday party, since David Friedman is the number one party clown in New York he was the obvious choice as subject. What Jarecki didn’t know when he started making this film is that by interviewing David he would uncover an entirely different story which would transform his documentary into one of the most challenging and critically acclaimed of all time.
In 1987 Arnold Friedman (David Friedman’s father) received a ‘controlled delivery’ of a child pornography magazine. Unbeknownst to him child pornography he had ordered from the Netherlands had been intercepted and postal inspectors had entered into a correspondence with him, which lead to him unquestionably incriminating himself and warranted a search of his family home. After leaving Arnold Friedman alone in the house for an hour with his magazine the postal inspector returned and discovered over twenty pornographic magazines containing underage boys. They also found evidence of a computer class being taught in the house. One month later after interviewing the 8-11 year old boys who attended Arnold’s class the police arrived at the house to arrest Arnold in connection with what would turn out to be hundreds of counts of sexual abuse, they also arrested his 18 year old son (and David’s little brother) Jesse.
The almost unique position of ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ is being able to tell the story of this case from both inside and outside the family. Not only do we get to see the standard interviews of police detectives, court judges, alleged victims and the family’s own recollections but also tens of hours of home video shot both before and during the case. This astonishing personal insight is really what makes this film so exceptional. To watch a family break up from the inside is heart breaking and compelling and sometimes so personal you want to turn away. This is not to undermine Jarecki’s skills as an investigative journalist, bucking the recent trend of documentary makers being the centre of their work, Jarecki is happy to let the story speak for itself. To do this however he has had to structure the film expertly, revealing information gradually, allowing people to totally convince you of their honesty and then completely impeach themselves, presenting the Friedman family as rounded characters, and generally telling this complex story so objectively and succinctly as to make the experience never less than totally gripping and genuinely cinematic. This is not a film made to exonerate the Friedmans or prove the American justice system right or wrong, unlike so many recent documentaries (the rather more subjective Michael Moore springs to mind) this film has no agenda other than to tell a story.
The story is almost unbelievable. Arnold and Elaine Friedman and their three sons David, Seth and Jesse are a typical upper middle class family living in the suburbs. Jarecki introduces them as if they are characters in a sitcom and in many ways that’s how they appear. I have never seen a family with so much home movie footage of themselves but, as Elaine says, Arnold liked pictures. How could such appalling acts of sexual abuse have been going on in the basement of this house of an award-winning teacher, where once a week Arnold (with the help of his teenage son Jesse) ran a computer class for local children? What is never in doubt is the fact that Arnold Friedman was a paedophile, what is constantly in doubt is whether he ever acted on his desires. The film will certainly divide an audience and possibly divide individual audience members as by the end of the film you will have doubted your own judgement more than once. The fact that many of the students are still adamant there was no abuse at all and that some of the children that did testify only ‘remembered’ what happened after hypnosis. The fact their was no physical evidence despite the classes being only an hour long and many of the alleged crimes involving penetration. That not one child was picked up crying or said a word to their parents until the police came knocking after Arnold’s pornographic magazines were found. All this will have you questioning the validity of this case, but never does Jarecki give in to the temptation to stand up and say these convictions were wrong. What’s amazing is how adamantly everyone believes they are right. This film says so much about the nature of truth, not everyone in this film can be telling the truth and yet they all appear to believe totally that they are. This is the kind of evidence people are sent to prison on and yet people's memories are not infallible (as is demonstrated beyond question in the film).
Perhaps even more than the intriguing than the look at the American justice system this film provides is its portrayal of a family falling apart. Arnold is an enigmatic and disturbing figure who appears never to have left his own childhood behind, what’s fascinating is despite everything that’s happened his sons still worship him. Elaine is an outsider in a seemingly loveless marriage and uncomfortable with being a mother, she inspires sympathy one minute and cold disinterest the next. Swinging between charismatic believability and extreme bitterness, David is clearly desperate to tell his story after years of forced silence. For me though it was Jesse who most engaged me and now even thinking about Jesse makes me want to cry. As a boy and a man he seems so innocent and pure, a bizarre thing to say about a man who at 19 went to prison for the most despicable acts imaginable, but a wholly accurate one. This is where I fail in my objectivity and show Jarecki’s true restraint, after only watching the film once I am totally convinced of Jesse’s innocence and can say watching the home movie of the night before and the journey to his trial broke my heart. Seth is notable for his absence in the documentary, but sensibly Jarecki doesn’t erase him from the family, his absence speaks of another level to this story still yet unseen.
On a technical level ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ comes across as a very simple film. It’s obvious that Jarecki has taken inspiration from the amazing archive of home movies available to him and that’s how this film plays, like one long home movie. There is something about the 1980’s sepia tinted nostalgia that runs through the boy’s childhood and right up to time of the case that makes the events unfolding even more harrowing. Home videos are made of happy times and watching the family’s disintegration in this format is disturbing. Even the parts of the film that aren’t shot in this way feel like they are the present day interviews are conducted with stationary single cameras and natural lighting. It is a technique that gives the film a consistent tone and feeling of immediacy, but more than that it achieves a simplicity that allows the story to speak for itself. It is the story that makes this film cinematic.
‘Capturing the Friedmans’ is a film I would urge you to watch and the best documentary I have ever seen. Jarecki’s skill as director creates a film that’s tragic, funny, terrible and wonderful. There are no easy answers here and I’m sure the film will make many people angry (often for opposite reasons) it can also be difficult to sit through frank accounts of sexual abuse, but I would still encourage you to watch it. There is no Michael Moore to tell you what to think, no Nick Broomfield to interject and make the film his personal journey, no Louis Theroux to offer a comforting sarcastic voice over, there is only a story to listen to and then only you can decide what to believe.