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A few months ago, someone asked me what I thought of Michael
Moore as a documentarian. "I don't", was my response.
A documentarian is a person who takes a subject and presents
it in as objective form as possible. Of course, bias is always
introduced with the presence of even a non-interested third
person, but the main goal is to, you know, document the
multiple sides of the multiple issues and leave serious analysis
the audience members to partake at the nearby coffee house.
As much as I love Michael Moore, he is singularly unabashed
about placing exaggerations and personal leanings into his
efforts. His films are designed force people into looking
at something like the economy or the culture and then let
people fight their way back to common ground. He is an entertaining
provocateur more than anything else. Going into Andrew Jarecki's
documentary Capturing the Friedmans, I had some reservations
about a documentary revealing evil and its effect on the suburban
life in the post-Roger and Me world of taking sides
and making arguments. This could have been trite and obvious
like a nonfiction version of American Scooby. But what
Jarecki does is create an absorbing and shockingly intimate
portrait of a damaged family that forces the audience to confront
both sides of each issue presented. And the Friedmans are
so accessible and so revealing that this story rises from
being a horror story on the evening news into something that
haunts the very notion of the American family.
The Friedman family of Long Island were obsessed with home
movie cameras and audio tape recorders. The amount of footage
of their averages lives as presented in this film is massive.
While initially innocent, there is no way any of them would
realize that the images captured would be the evidence calm
before the storm. Arnold and Elaine Friedman were a seemingly
charmed and functional couple. Arnold had once worked as a
musician in the Catskills and settled into the town of Great
Neck, NY to teach music and to raise three sons: David, Seth,
and Jesse. After retirement, Arnold taught a computer class
in the family home's basement. After all of these home movies
of holidays and family magic shows, the sound of an FBI agent's
voice is a little jarring. As he explains the procedure that
the Postal Service employed to finger Arnold Friedman as the
recipient and sender of massive amounts of child pornography,
we realize that the film is ready to take a very dark turn.
Arnold is charged with transporting graphic and sickening
photos and magazines of young boys- a federal offense. Once
these charges circulate, former computer students begin to
claim that they were molested by Arnold during class. They
allege mass orgies and playing "naked leap frog"
while other students contend nothing happened. What's worse,
several other children claim that Jesse assisted his father
in the sexual abuse in addition to assaulting the children.
The case rattles the neighborhood and the Friedman household.
Elaine, enraged by the notion that her husband kept such material
in their house, immediately assumes Arnold's guilt and asks
him to plea in order to avoid a large trial sure to air out
family secrets. The boys , particularly David, stand up for
their father and all the arguments and emotion is also captured
by home recordings. At the end, Arnold tries to save the family
by sacrifice (or by admission) and ends up plunging them further
into his own personal sins.
Through the home movies and audio tapes mixed with contemporaneous
interviews with the family, Capturing the Friedmans offers
a portrait of a family that often comes too close for comfort.
Elaine, in light of the child molestation charges, discusses
her and Arnold's sex life with extreme frankness but also
helps to enlighten the viewer to how their relationship worked
and why she stood by him even though this aspect of the relationship
was less that sufficient. The boys are also very candid; if
they are not angry at their mother for her lack of support,
then it's aimed at the parents of the children who they know
are "f----- liars". And for moments at a time, the
audience is inclined to agree with the sons. The prosecutors
list off evidence like "rooms filled with pornography"
at the same time Jarecki shows off footage of the house with
nothing to be seen. Half of the children -now adults - who
are interviewed make claims of widespread abuse in full view
of other children, but the others say nothing happened of
the kind happened in front of them or elsewhere. They are
backed up by a lack of any physical evidence. But once the
film gets the audience on Arnold's side, the films throws
in a loop that complicates the situation. Arnold extensively
wrote about his sexual deviance, Jesse seems jubilant outside
of court right after he has tearfully broke down, and the
question lingers as to why Arnold would plead guilty of such
a heinous crime that he says he did not commit. Even if he
didn't want to put his family through the trauma, how could
someone say they are guilty of something so evil and heinous?
Just as disturbing at its initial presentation is Elaine's
almost automatic acceptance of Arnold's admission. One wonders
how a wife could easily dismiss a man she loves so much, especially
when this dismissal comes at so much pain of her children.
What may be seen as coldness slowly becomes a pained agony
that developed when she learned he lusted after the subjects
of his pornography collection. Most films would demand the
audience take a side, but Capturing the Friedmans understand
the weight of its subject material and knows that an objective
analysis is all the film really needs. One begins to love
the family but then can no longer accept its darkness. No
scene in cinema will trouble me more that Elaine's discussion
of Arnold's rationale for his secrets: As she describes his
confession that he diverted his attention for fear of being
attracted to their sons, Jarecki shows an innocent clip of
the boys dancing in the living room attempting to play with
Dad. Arnold resists and the look of conflict in his eyes is
enough to make black bile rise to your throat. No film should
be as intimate with its subjects like Capturing the Friedmans.
But it's almost a thankful miracle that it achieves this
level.
So there is no expressed provocation with Capturing the
Friedmans. It is merely a frank, sad commentary on the
shadows of our existence. Few films this year will rattle
the audience as much as this does with its candid sincerity.
Just don't expect the French to give it a twenty minute standing
ovation.
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