by Joel Bocko
Putting aside the fact that much of Capturing the Friedmans is in video – certainly the family home movies which provide its elusive emotional core – this 2003 documentary calls to mind those competing definitions of cinema: “truth 24 frames a second,” “lies 24 frames a second.” While nonfiction films would seem to sway the pendulum in the former direction, they actually make the issue even more complex. On the one hand, what we are seeing, especially in a documentary like this which utilizes primary source material (home movies compete with interviews for screen time, and there are no re-enactments – thankfully) is an undeniably direct representation of external, physical reality. On the other hand, what lies behind that exterior – what is the shell of the image concealing? And more importantly, why this particular footage, and why shown in this particular way? If the truth is in what we see on screen, then the lies – or at least the mysteries – are what we don’t see, what’s hidden behind and littered around the frame.
Those, then, are the metaphysics of Capturing the Friedmans. What about the actuality; what do we see? Deceptively cheery home movies, which prime us to suspect the worst. Representatives of the law in their present-day offices, recalling a case from 20 years ago. Heavily blurred images of dirty magazines which Long Island family patriarch Arnold Friedman had stashed behind his piano – the same piano at which he offered lessons to neighborhood children. Arnold led away in handcuffs, accused of child molestation. His son David (later New York’s most famous birthday clown and the initial sole subject of this movie, before director Andrew Jarecki got wind of his family history and expanded its scope) wearing underwear on his head in an ill-advised provocation of police. And then youngest son Jesse, also arrested, accused of conducting heinous, almost Boschian sex orgies at the family home during computer lessons co-taught with his father.
What these images add up to: in 1987, Arnold Friedman was caught in a child-porn sting and acknowledged his pedophilia. Following this, federal officials investigated his computer classes, came up with multiple allegations of molestation and arrested both Arnold and Jesse for suspected child abuse. Arnold pleaded guilty and later killed himself in prison (outside of the courtroom, he has claimed that the guilty plea was to distance his case from his son’s, and that in fact the allegations were false, though he did admit to molesting boys in an unrelated incident years earlier). Jesse also eventually entered a guilty plea, despite maintaining his innocence before and after his court appearance – claiming that, at only 19, he was pressured to “confess” by his lawyer and his mother, who feared that an unsympathetic jury would condemn him to life in prison. No physical evidence was ever found to confirm the many allegations of rape, questionable psychiatric and police tactics – including hypnosis in the former case – were used to obtain eyewitness accounts, and students have since stepped forward to say that they never saw anything untoward occur at the classes – a far cry from the hellish mass-rape scenarios prosecutors alleged. In other words, the case – which ultimately killed one man and sent another to prison for 15 years – now looks extremely weak.
But aside from the legal questions, the film is ultimately a family portrait, shattered – alternately in slow-motion and time-lapse, which is to say that we watch moments of pain and confusion up close and personal yet are able to digest years of destruction in the course of two hours. Jarecki, in his first film, expertly controls the pace, distills a narrative from the chaos, and yet manages to convince us, for the most part, that he is being fairly objective and letting the material speak for itself. In a certain sense, he does not get in the way of his material, exploiting its ambiguity – but in another sense, this approach could be seen as doubly manipulative: pulling us deftly in one direction, without admitting it’s doing so.
Debbie Nathan, who is interviewed in the film, alleged in a 2003 Village Voice article that Jarecki’s ambiguous approach – his statements that “he didn’t know” if Arthur Friedman was a child molester, and his use of the tagline “who do you believe?” to promote the film – is a dishonest calculation. She writes that “Jarecki, the multimillionaire founder of Moviefone, also has shrewd business sense. While the film was in production, Jarecki told the Friedman family he thought the two were innocent of the charges. Polling viewers at Sundance in January, he was struck by how they were split over Arnold and Jesse’s guilt. Since then, he’s crafted a marketing strategy based on ambiguity, and during Q&As and interviews, he has studiously avoided taking a stand.”
Yet lest she be seen as the redemptive voice of reason here, Nathan’s own piece is compromised by a desire to downplay the effects of sex abuse. (Wanting to humanize pedophiles, Nathan goes too far, cherry-picking academic studies to soft-pedal molestation as something that may not “feel weird or troublesome enough to remember for very long”; her apologia climaxes with a slippery miss-the-point: “the Arnold Friedmans of the world are kinder to kids than many normal adults.”) So even the criticism of the compromised film comes from compromised sources itself. Furthermore, other critiques of Friedmans‘ steadfast “objectivity” differ on the ill effects of this perceived approach.
On Salon.com, Charles Taylor asserts that the Friedmans were obviously innocent and regrets Jarecki’s lack of Michael Moore-esque chutzpah in confronting his subjects. (Even more than Nathan, Taylor gives short shrift to the victims of child abuse, and sees molestation as largely a myth, created by Reaganite America’s desire to see children “fantasized and fetishized as wholly pure beings.” In other words, he simplifies just as much as the molestation-hunters who saw sex abusers behind every door.) Meanwhile, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times also scolds Jarecki for his hands-off approach, but regards the often bizarre Friedmans as the ones who escaped from Jarecki’s grasp. Turan writes, “the Friedmans turn out to be a stranger and messier bunch than this film is comfortable with or quite knows how to handle.”
Indeed, there’s plenty of “strange and messy” behavior to mull over. There’s Jesse’s manic dancing on the courtroom steps after his sentencing (see above), David’s cruel condemnations of his mother (who sometimes seems the only sane member of the clan), and most of all Arnold’s creepy and contradictory admissions – from raping his younger brother as a child to being turned on by a child visitor to the penitentiary, all of which warp attempts to paint the family as noble victims of right-wing homophobic inquisitors. There’s also the fact, exemplified by Jesse’s little dance and David’s underwear stunt – not to mention the videotaping of private family arguments – that the Friedmans are always performing. As Jeff Ignatius puts it, “These guys are never authentic, because they’re always on-camera. I don’t see any moments in Capturing the Friedmans that are unself-conscious.”
As is often the case, Capturing the Friedmans‘ weaknesses are also its strengths. First of all, it’s true that Jarecki at times strikes an uneasy balance between controlling his material too much and failing to stamp a clear perspective on the proceedings. On the one hand, he’s guilty of manipulating interviews to make us question accusers and sympathize with accused (a “victim” is photographed sprawled out on a couch in short shorts, face obscured by shadow, while another student who denies abuse is photographed in a bright room; he’s well-groomed and wearing a suit). Overall, the alleged victims are almost entirely voiceless here – the psychodrama of Arnold’s pedophilia is played entirely within his own life and that of his family. While it’s true that the movie’s subject is the Friedmans, and that many accusers remain veiled by anonymity, it’s troubling that Jarecki’s superficially objective viewpoint makes so little effort to address those who may have been abused. Jarecki also gives us one final, puzzling “surprise” by waiting to reveal that Arnold’s brother is gay – as if by coming out he somehow avoided his repressed sibling’s fate (pedophilia and homosexuality are, to my understanding, not related). And on the other hand, despite a propensity for stylistic tics which suggest a strong vision, Jarecki does take a step back – not only from establishing his sympathy with the Friedmans, but also from providing a clear outline of the actual charges. We hear outlandish-sounding snippets but never a clear, concise statement of the prosecution’s case.
Yet Jarecki’s ostensible neutrality (not in the organization of the material, which clearly favors the Friedmans, but in its overt presentation which eschews moralizing narration and “gotcha” interviews) does allow room for us to ponder the tangled case in full respect for its complications. This is an achievement, and one which a more agitprop documentary would not have been able to maintain. The “silence” of the filmmaker, however misleading and ethically dubious, also allows the raw material to speak for itself. Here, many of the Friedmans’ aforementioned flaws actually serve to humanize them and what seems wacky also seems irrational and desperate and stumbling in ways that are familiar to any honest member of the human species – that dance in front of the courthouse, smile and all, is best understood as a dance of despair.
Even given the various contingencies and contexts within which Jarecki places the footage, all this has a certain primal power which remains unadorned by any attempt to “make sense of it all.” By freeing the video footage in this sense, Jarecki remains honest to the spirit of confusion and chaos which engulfs his protagonists, and he also universalizes this specific horror show. In its most harrowing moments, the Friedman spectacle – both shadowed recollections and at times irreconcilably playful and/or partial (in both senses of the word) direct video – becomes an exaggerated allegory of the secrets and tensions every family harbors. Here is the madness and sorrow which hides beneath the surface of even, maybe especially, the most outwardly successful and vibrant nuclear families and, by extension, the entire human race. It’s ironic that Jarecki manages to evoke this general feeling by allowing his material to remain specific, but then that’s almost always the achievement of art.
Of course, whether or not this extremely personal material and this probable miscarriage of justice have any right to be confused with art (let alone voyeuristic entertainment which, in tarring the doc as a highbrow version of reality TV, certain skeptics have alleged) is a matter of debate. But that can of worms that was opened one hundred years ago, when the first camera was pointed at “reality,” turning ephemeral moment into scrutinizable spectacle. These questions will continue to be asked as long as cinema, particularly documentary, exists in one form or another.
Speaking of which…
Next up: Grizzly Man (#47)
“But aside from the legal questions, the film is ultimately a family portrait, shattered – alternately in slow-motion and time-lapse, which is to say that we watch moments of pain and confusion up close and personal yet are able to digest years of destruction in the course of two hours.”
Indeed Joel, indeed. Superbly stated. This film left me cold, and I’ve never supported the overwhelmingly positive critical reaction, though I’ll admit (as you suggested)it’s an impressively crafted documentary. I was never, however, convinced of the guilt here and was most intrigued to read the piece there in Salon. The mother was heartless, and film was (despite its intent) emotionally distancing even if the speculation of injustice was still quietly affecting. This is a dysfunctional bunch, hiding behind the facade of normalcy, and the film’s unfolding is tingue with vagueness, and a fair amount of tedium.
To have written such a thought-provoking and exhaustive review on this film is quite an accomplishment, no doubt about that.
Whether or not this case was credible almost seems besides the point, as the net result is that a man lost his life, and another, the son was sent to prison. Even overwhelming guilt for this alleged crime wouldn’t result in what is tantamount to a death sentence. Therein lies the tragedy and the power of this film, which I liked more than Sam did.
This is a tremendous essay.
I watched this on DVD last year. I thought the presentation was alternately interesting and banal, but I resent Jareki’s tactics in trying to promote this film. His motives tarnish this documentary mightily.
Bringing in the brother’s homosexuality as if to tie that to pedaphilia is a dubious decision. But I think the main problem with this film as I recall was that the interviews weren’t entire honest; they were slanted to conform to what Jarecki wanted the audience to see. We never really get to know Arnold nor his son on a personal level and are mostly left with the wife’s revelations. (which could well be questionable anyway)
That’s an interest piont, Peter. I tried to address it in the essay but as I noted everyone here, the family, the observors, the observors of the observors, seems to come off somewhat tainted, which may even be one of the points of the film.
Though many seemed to really dislike the mother, I found her one of the more sympathetic people in the movie. I don’t think her advice to her son was motivated by selfishness, but by fear, and as for her husband, I don’t blame her at all for her feelings towards him. While flawed, she did seem to be something of a scapegoat for other people.
Thanks to all for the comments.
Bill, I agree with somewhat on the last point – I think we got a decent review of Jesse through his interviews and the comments of the others.
But I agree with you 100% on your other two points. As I said in the piece, it was in very poor taste to use the brother’s homosexuality as a “reveal” at the end, as if that said anything about anything. And the way the interviews were presented was extremely slanted – particularly those of the victims (I think it was Kenneth Turan’s review that said the victim who maintains his story is posed like a male hustler)…
Movie Man, I did see your arguments, and I am in your corner. Perhaps the problem I had with the last point had more to do with Arnold’s inhibited personality in the flashbacks. But I always got the feeling something was being concealed.
So did I Bill. I never fely there was full disclosure.
I guess I’m in the minority here, but I thought this was one of the best documentaries of the decade and easily one of my all time favorites. The ambiguity of the film and the fascinating subject hooked me and I disagree about the film being ‘cold.’ There were some scenes that really got to me emotionally here like the ending. I also thought the mother character was rather sympathetic and like Joel said in his fantastic review, sometimes seemed like “the only sane member of the clan.” I mean put yourself in her shoes going through this whole ordeal and basically having your sons siding against you. I also didn’t find the interviews very slanted. I thought the director made a great decision keeping himself out of his own film and just focusing on his subjects. This film came out the same year as another fantastic documentary, Errol Morris’ Fog of War, and I believe this one is just as good. In my opinion it’s might be the best documentary, maybe next to No End in Sight, that has come out this decade.
Anu, before I address you here (and as it’s Joel’s excellent piece, I am sure he will as well) please let me know the status of your blogsite as seem to be getting a linked post that it moved. Not only do I want to make a comment, but I want to make sure it’s properly presented on the blogroll. Your presence here for months can’t be acknowledged enough and we all are lucky for it, my friend.
Anu, there are personal documentaries that moved me to tears …i.e….BROTHER’S KEEPER, DEAR ZACHARY, BEST BOY, but none of the characters in this film were sufficiently drawn nor infused with empathy. I simply couldn’t be moved. Arthur was quite an enigmatic individual, who few could seemingly shed tears for. I was unconvinced and alienated by the mother but I see that Joel (above) in referencing what he penned in his remarkable essay, makes some points that I am practically convinced of. She may have been unjustly demonized.
Well I moved to http://theconfidentialreport.wordpress.com and currently I only have two posts. But with the end of the year on the horizon, I’m gonna try to do an essay for each of my ten favorite films of the decade, but it will mean I have to watch a lot of big films including: including the Golden Palm winner The White Ribbon and Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces and Tom Ford’s debut A Simple Man. I also am planing to get some reviews done including some on my nineties list (including my number three choice: the underrated masterpiece Naked Lunch) and maybe re-post my review of Love Streams. Also I have to say Brothers Keeper has been on my list of films to see for a while.
Thanks, Anu. Yes, we agree on the mother – imagine finding out those things about the man you’ve spent 30 years with (and while he probably was not guilty of many of his alleged crimes, he was an admitted reader of child pornography and a self-confessed molestor). I can see why her sons have a difficult relationship but I feel like sometimes society – and particularly those affiliated with the arts – put too much emphasis on charisma. In some ways, Arthur may be more “likable” than his wife but that doesn’t make him a better person… (and I’m not saying this was Sam’s reasoning, but it’s a line of thought I pick up reading certain responses to the film.)
Sorry to say I never got to this, even with all the praise. This is a very difficult and controversial subject, and the only documentaries that have driven deep down into the psychology of the characters – it seems – are the ones about pedaphilia in the church. And there are a number of those. Exceptional review.
Thanks, Joe. I’ve yet to see those, kind of holding back I guess – fascinating as the subject matter is, it’s pretty draining stuff (as it should be) and even after this one, I felt a bit beleagured.
By the way, everyone should check out (if not already) the links I included in the piece. The Taylor review in particular is indicative of a certain mindset I find rather irritating in the way it tries to package the “message” of the movie in a little bottle, and seems unwilling to consider the “other side” of the story which is that some people are indeed molested, and that the whole story is not just obverblown cases – even while that’s an important aspect that initially got overlooked. At least that’s my take on it. Nathan’s essay, while more sensitive and nuanced, is in some ways even more objectionable (while also very informative and interesting). Turan, while harder on the film than me, is the one I probably agree with most. All worth reading.
The central character in this film, “Arnold” is a prime candidate for disection. This film did an impressive job of framing him within the family dynamics,where he is never able to cross the emotional barrier that may have enables him to win the trust of his wife. That was one part of his downfall.
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