DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND (2002)
Directed by Lucy
Walker
77 mins. PG-13,
Documentary
* * * *
Quick. Who throws the wildest parties in Indiana? If you
answered “the Amish,” you were either: (a) being glib and got lucky, or (b)
among the very few Americans who know about the doctrine known as rumspiga, which is fascinatingly
documented in Devil’s Playground. I
don’t know how I missed this ten-year-old documentary first time around, but
thanks to Netflix I finally got around to seeing it. It remains relevant; in a
tradition-bound society such as the Amish that freezes time in the
pre-electrical days of the late 17th century, things don’t change
very much.
The entire notion of “Amish Gone Wild” would strike most
Americans as an oxymoron, but it’s actually quite consistent with Amish
theology. The Amish are part of a Reformation tradition known as Anabaptism. The ana
(against) part of that is adult baptism; that is, Anabaptists believe that only
informed adults can have conversion experiences—the decision to join (or not
join) the church must be a free will decision. There is, strictly speaking, no
such thing as being “born” Amish.
At the age of 16, each individual raised in an Amish family is cast
adrift and is free to live among the “English” (all non-Amish, no matter their
actual ethnic background). This is
the rumspiga, the period of
decision-making. There is no set time limit as to when one must decide whether to
join Amish society or remain among the English (though most do so within three
to five years) and during this period one can do as one wishes. Many
Amish-raised adolescents do it all: drugs, booze, premarital sex, smoking,
surfing the Internet for porn, wild parties… as if they were first-year college
students! An Amish party socks in outsiders from miles around—the music booms
(from high-end electronics no less!) and only the hormones flow faster than the
booze.
The Devil’s Playground
follows several Indiana teens through rumspiga,
each keenly aware that a decision to join Amish society means that they must
leave behind their current path forever. The film is a piece of documentary
anthropology, but it plays like a taut drama. You will find yourself rooting
for some of the kids to leave the Amish and others—such as a young man busted
for drug-dealing and gang behavior—to save themselves and return to the fold.
Most youth do return. One of my critiques of the film is that Walker could have
explained better why that decision is made. (We can infer that the ways of the
English lose their allure.) Another is that Walker doesn’t explain in much
detail how kids with only eight years of education and no visible means of
support manage to live among the English at all. But, then again, maybe she
couldn’t or shouldn’t. (Once one is in the church, being filmed or even seeing
a movie is generally off limits.) Give Walker, as an outsider, props for
gaining any sort of access into closed Amish society, and kudos to her film for
shedding tiny rays of light on the practice of rumspiga.
If you label yourself as a person who doesn’t like
documentaries, do yourself a favor and check this out before you close the book
on them. I think you’ll agree that there’s more drama and true emotion in this
little gem of a doc than in 99% of the big-budget, no-heart pap emanating from
that other closed society in our midst: Hollywood.
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