WILLING SUBJECTS (spoilers)

[Chris Knipp]

I have stated in my separate review of the documentary that I don't approve of Jarecki's method of withholding judgment; I also disapprove of his withholding information, like the fact that the brother was gay, till late in the film. I think it sensationalistic and wrong to advertise the documentary as representing a conundrum. What is made clear in the film is that, as Oscar Jubis has pointed out, the two men were clearly sent to jail without the case having been proven, due to the hysteria of the times and the police's desire to railroad suspects in a case which they essentially cooked up. This very important fact is not a conundrum.

First, Fiiedman père was caught in a sting operation ordering kiddy porm. There's no doubt about the fact that he did that and that he was turned on by the idea of sex with underage boys. Then the police looked more closely and discovered that Friedman gave a computer class at his house for young teenage boys. They saw this as a wonderful opportunity and then got the names of the boys and went to work on them. There is plenty of evidence that children can be pressured into giving whatever testimony police want out of them. The alternating vagueness and incredibility of the boys' testimony as revealed in recent interviews shows that the evidence was highly suspect. The most forthcoming witness in the recent interviews is one who seems titillated by the stories he is telling, says things that are incredible, and then says it didn't come out till he was hypnotized. Nonetheless the witnesses were used to bring an astronomical number of charges, typical of this kind of hysteria-driven case at the time.

There is no way of knowing what really happened during the computer classes, but pretty obvious that some of the outrageous and fantastic things mentioned couldn't have happened. It's possible that something, albeit minor, did happen of a sexual nature. But if so, how could the majority of the boys return home every day after the class and say nothing to their parents prior to the police investigation? And how could have Friedman father and son get away with anything with the rest of the class watching?

It's not entirely clear that Friedman pere was ever guilty of any child sexual abuse. It is clear that he would have fantasized about it. Perhaps he ultimately pleaded guilty and allowed himself to be sent to jail because he felt intense guilt for his desires and wanted to be punished for them.

I was disappointed that there wasn't more from journalists or investigators given in the film about the atmosphere of hysteria surrounding child abuse during the Eighties, when all this happened, and about the various cases around the country which later were found to have been fabricated by police. There is the one woman journalist who is a voice in the piece and does present this information in outline, but this is a far more important aspect of the subject than is made clear in terms of screen time.

It is my feeling that the fact Jarecki started out to make a movie about party clowns and then came to this story because the eldest son was the top NYC party clown is indicative that this story was more than Jarecki could really handle. He went into the making of Capturing the Friedmans with virtually no experience as a filmmaker, and this is a sensitive, complex subject that demands an experienced documentarian, preferably, of course, one who has a prior interest in and knowledge of the subject.

Jarecki, in contrast, merely stumbled on the subject. Of course not only was it a juicy one, but he also was fortunate enough to sbumble on all the home movie footage the Friedmans had made and preserved, and to be allowed by them to use it. I am not saying that the resulting film is a a slapdash piece of work. Jarecki clearly did work hard for three years putting together the film and gathering other data and interviews for it. He made a sincere effort. But he lacked the documentary experience to produce a really satisfying film.

Jarecki's material is so sensational and disturbing that, given the sincere effort that he put into it, he was bound to succeed -- but only in the limited sense of gaining an audience. To go so far as to call Capturing the Friedmans a "masterpiece" as some writers have done, I think is totally mistaken. It is, in fact, a highly unsatisyfing film, as well as a total downer, and it is more of a downer because the filmmaker is not really up to the subject.

NOTE: I am not writing this to refute any comments by Oscar or any of the others who have contributed to this discussion, but only to make clear my evaluation of the film itself, as distinct from the subject matter. There are many subjects that the film brings up. One is the tragedy of the disintegration of a family (one which, perhaps, was already "dysfunctional," but that is a rather vague and catchall term). Another is the issue of a family with a perhaps excessive proclivity to self-recording and self-revelation. At the core of the story is the issue of pedophilia, what it is like, how it arises, and what effects it has on people's lives. And finally there is the hysteria surrounding pedophilia as practiced, or imagined to have been practiced, on groups of children during the Eighties in a number of cases which later turned out to have been trumped up. I think it's fair to say that Capturing the Friedmans is not up to dealing with all these subjects adequately or even of keeping track of them.