"Who Do You Believe?"
As far as I know, this site has not reviewed any documentaries. If you adhere to the popular adage that "truth is stranger than fiction", you know how rewarding the documetary genre can be when done right. "Capturing The Friedmans", a 2002 work by Andrew Janecki(and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival), is documentary film at its best.
"Capturing The Friedmans" began as Andrew Janecki set out to chronicle one of New York's greatest birthday clowns: Mr. "Silly Billy". However, Janecki soon discovered that the clowns name was David Friedman, and his family history was much more interesting than his day job. Friedmans brother(Jesse,)and his father(Arnold) ,had pleaded guilty in the late '80s to sexually molesting young boys who'd come to their house for computer lessons. David Friedman, shortly after their arrests, taped the family's obviously strained interactions. Friedmans home videos, merged with Janecki's own present interviews of various figures involved in the trial, make up the bulk of "Capturing The Friedmans".
For a little historical context(which the film kind of ignores), the 1980's brought a series of bizarre child molestation witch hunts. One such example was the case of Kelly Michaels. Michaels, a day care worker, was accused by children of "making them eat boiled babies", "sticking a sword up a child's rectum" and turning one student into a mouse. Going off the interviews of three and four year olds, and massive parental hysteria, Micheals was convicted of 115 counts of abuse, and in 1988 sentenced to forty-seven years in prison. "Believe The Children" became the motto of the trial,and Michaels was the victim of a severe twisted national pathology.
"Capturing The Friedmans" central case, the alleged abuse in the computer room, operates under a similar haze. What was under little doubt was that Arnold Friedman was a pedophile. He was in possession of multiple child pornography magazines,and claimed to have molested his brother Howard when he was a child(although Howard does not recall this). However, the film offers the uneasy suggestion that,while Arnold was aware of his sins, the crime he was actually being accused of may not have occurred at all. David Edelstein writes:" There was, simply, no physical evidence, and nothing was reported—to anyone—until Long Island prosecutors, armed with evidence that Arnold Friedman had both received and mailed pedophile magazines, began to dig. There is little doubt that those prosecutors and the judge—all of whom are interviewed by Jarecki—believe that both Arnold and Jesse Friedman were guilty. But there's at least a reasonable doubt that anything happened in those computer classes."
The film maintains an even handed keel throughout, particularly when detailing Jesse Friedman, whose conviction casts the biggest shadow of doubt. While the film succeeds at being taken seriously because of it's committment to objectivity, much debate has remained as to the merits of such a method. Jarecki left out some interviews that may have stregthened the case against the police/accusers,and new DVD material uncovers just how flawed the Friedman investigation really was.(For more:http://www.slate.com/id/2096296)
In the end, Janecki and crew sacrificed everything for the sake of drama. As I finished the film, I thought about the real world implications of this. Could Jesse have spent 13 years in prison for naught, for the sake of creating an "evenhanded" film that would be taken seriously? How much stature would the documentary have sacrificed if it had included all the evidence? Janecki sought to leave the viewer wondering "innocent or guilty?", but perhaps he acheived something he had not intended: The constant schism between what is said and unsaid, our desire to bend both to our wills,and the tragic implications.
(The whole film is on YouTube if you want to watch it)
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