 Starring: Arnold Friedman, David Friedman, Elaine Friedman, Jesse Friedman
Director: Andrew Jarecki
Year Of Release: 2003
Plot: This documentary looks at the Friedmans, an upper middle class family from upstate New York, whose world was turned upside down when the father, Arnold, was arrested for possession of child pornography in the late 1980s. The police questioned the locals and soon Arnold and his 18-year-old son Jesse, were charged with the sexual abuse of children in a computer class. Featuring footage the family shot themselves at the time of the trial and later interviews, the documentary pieces together how it affected the family. |
Capturing The Friedmans is on my list of movies I would encourage everyone to watch, even though I know few people will. After all, a documentary about convicted paedophiles doesn’t sound like it’ll be one of the most engrossing, thought provoking films of the past 10 years. It just sounds like it’s going to be icky. However Capturing The Friedmans isn’t an uncomfortable experience for the reasons you might think.
The main discomfort in the film doesn’t come from any lurid details of the alleged child sex ring middle-aged Arnold and his 18-year-old son Jesse are supposed to have run during a computer class, it’s in whether they were actually guilty or not. The film is cleverly constructed so that every time you think you’ve gotten to the truth, it slips out of your grasp. It plays with how people remember things and whether confessions can be trusted (both men eventually plead guilty, although young Jesse later recanted and said he never did anything, while with Arnold you get the feeling he didn’t want to plead guilty, largely because he thought they were the wrong charges, not that he didn’t have an unhealthy interest in young boys). You also start to see how everyone has an agenda in such an emotive case, and how important individual personalities are in situations like this. The truth is slippery, and never more so than here. (For more on truth in documentaries, read the Movie-A-Day article on Aileen Wuornos: The Selling Of A Serial Killer)
The film has provoked endless discussion over Arnold and Jesse’s guilt or innocence, as it never comes down on one side or the other (although there’s some evidence director Andrew Jarecki thought he was making a pro-Jesse’s innocence movie). The scale of the crimes they were charged with sound slightly preposterous to have taken place without anybody knowing, but of course that doesn’t mean nothing happened. Then there’s the fact the investigation started because Arnold had child pornography and seems to have confessed to molesting other children, including his own brother, which adds smoke to the idea something went on in the computer classes, however Arnold’s brother says he has absolutely no memory of being abused. Everyone in the case is convinced they know what’s going on, but many seem to have faulty memories, while others flat out contradict one another.
It’s disturbing because while we like to be able to think that in cases where such terrible things are meant to have happen, we can simply find out who’s guilty and who isn’t and punish them in a court of law, it’s much more complicated than that, and even those who may have committed heinous crimes can still be somewhat sympathetic.
It would be impossible here to go into all the ins and outs of the case as it’s incredibly complex, but it is an absolutely fascinating journey, which ends up with the viewer not only questioning the Friedmans’ guilt or innocence, but also the very nature of how we decide things. How much of what we believe is based on what we ‘want’ to be true, and how much just on a genuine appraisal of the evidence? How far are we influenced by what we think of the person giving us their version of the facts, rather than purely making our judgement on what they’re actually saying?
It should be noted though that Capturing The Friedmans isn’t quite as full and frank as it first appears, although most of what it misses out seems more to due to time pressure than mendacity. That said, the fact the film doesn’t mention there were three other men the police charged with crimes connected to the ‘sex ring’ would seem a major piece of info, but it isn’t in the film. Thankfully though, the two disc DVD release fills in most of these holes with loads more information.
However, while much of the interest in Capturing The Friedmans is in how it presents personal accounts from all sides of the case and shows us how elusive the truth can be, to my mind even more fascinating is its dissection of the Friedman family itself.
In what was an absolute boon for the documentary, for some reason the eldest Friedman son, David, decided to buy a video camera just after his father and brother were charged with the hideous crimes, and started filming everything that took place. It takes you right inside the family as it implodes and gives you a unique insight into a very bizarre situation.
Watching these videos is a very odd experience, because they’re nothing like you’d expect them to be. You’d think any anger would be directed at Jesse or Arnold, but it’s the mother of the family who everyone seems to be against, because she’s the only one who’ll admit that everything isn’t fine and dandy. Every time I watch the film I end up trying to put myself in the Friedman’s position. Is their seeming jollity in the videos a front, or are they just really screwed up? Would I be joking around the day before I was going to prison for years, whether I’d done it or not? And what were they trying to achieve by getting such personal moment on tape, or is it another sign that the family was very peculiar, whether they were involved in a child sex ring or not?
The Friedmans seem both normal and eccentric at the same time, which leaves you questions both whether they did it, and how you’d be able to judge that (we tend to like to think if you went into a paedophile’s house, it’d be obvious they were a weird sicko, but they probably look quite normal).
Capturing The Friedmans really is an incredible movie and one of the best documentaries of the past 10 years. If you’ve never seen it, I’d recommending getting hold of a copy right now, as it’s a brilliant film and one of the most thought provoking and fascinating movies around.
Incidentally, the genesis of the project is also rather bizarre, showing what a fortunate confluence of events led to the movie’s existence (not least the fact David Friedman videotaped such fascinating private moments of his family as it collapsed in extraordinary circumstances). Director Andrew Jarecki was making a documentary about New York children’s party entertainers. The top entertainer at the time was none other than David Friedman, and after a little digging, Jarecki found out the story about his family, and suddenly the film became something else entirely. And yes, it is rather bizarre that after all that happened to his family, David became a children’s entertainer, but he did and was very successful at it.
TIM ISAAC
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