The Correspondent: Slow at First, then a Whallop

 

 

  

THE CORRESPONDENT (2025)

By Virginia Evans

Thorndike Press, 304 pages.

★★★

 

The Correspondent is an epistolary novel and the debut offering from Virginia Evans. Think of a bundle of letters that someone has squirreled away. Were you to read them, you’d probably find that they were not in chronological order. Everyone it seems has a “system” for filing personal papers: size, importance, subject, or randomly. My wife Emily faithfully wrote to her great aunt Frances in Maine for 40 years before Frances passed away. This is to say that Evans reveals letters in her novel covering the years between 1953-2021, but not sequentially.

 

The central character is Sybil Stone Van Antwerp, a retired law clerk living in Annapolis, Maryland. Though she does use email, think of her as among the fading breed that carefully composes letters. She writes to many people, including authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Ann Patchett, Larry McMurtry, and Joan Didion. Her favorite pen pal is Rosalie Boyd, who has been her BFF for 60+ years. They know everything about each other, though Rosalie now lives in Connecticut. It helps that Rosalie was once married to Sybil’s son Bruce. In addition to news, joys, and sorrows Sybil and Rosalie discuss what books they are reading.

 

This is not a Hallmark happy book. We learn that Sybil is divorced from Daan, who left the marriage and moved back to Belgium. Sybil is complex, can a bit of a snob, and lives vicariously through books and letters. She is estranged from her daughter Fiona, does battle with a University of Maryland dean who won’t allow her to audit a course, and wishes that her gay brother Felix who travels a lot lived nearer to her.

 

Yet, Sybil also has a soft side that grows more prominent as she ages. She is very proud of her law career and when Judge Landy tells her of his son’s social problems, Sybil takes on young Harry as a correspondent. She recognizes his math genius and they continue to write and visit until Harry is a young man. She also writes to Liz Donnelly, the wife of the late Judge Guy Donnelly for whom she clerked. That’s a gutsy thing to do as rumors flew that she was once more than a “work wife” to the judge. Was she? Sybil doesn’t dignify such whispers with a response. She is happy to intervene to help a Syrian man get an engineering job, but she flat out refuses to speak to the press about a 1981 murder case whose verdict was controversial.

 

Apparently, Sybil remains an attractive woman into her seventies as she is being courted by her kind German neighbor Theodore Lübeck and Mick Watts, a very rich Texan.  Nonetheless, it doesn’t take much to knock Sybil off her stride. She’s upset when Felix gives her a subscription to Legacy, one of those DNA testers that tell you stuff like you’re related to King Waldorfsalad III. Against her better judgment she takes the test and freaks out when she finds out she has a 49% match with a woman in Scotland. That probably wouldn’t throw you for a loop, but Sybil was adopted when she was a 14-month-old baby. Felix was also adopted, so it’s doubtful he’s a blood relative. And who is the mysterious D.M. who periodically sends her hate mail? Why does she throw a fit when she finds out that Fiona came to the States and spilled her heart to Rosalie but didn’t tell Sybil, her mother, that she was in the United States? Would you get so angry that you’d cut off contact with your best friend? To top it off, Sylvia is going blind. How will she survive without being able to read or write?

 

This is a novel in which what is not said or faced reveals more than what is. Who is the mysterious “D.M.” who periodically sends Sylvia hate mail? As she ages, can Sylvia find a balance between being in charge and being kind?

 

The Correspondent became a surprise hit months after it was released, a rare case in which reviewers followed the lead of readers rather than vice versa. In my view, though, it’s half of a brilliant book. I was initially bored by the constant parade of letters, but by the end, I was quite moved by it.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Laura Revisited: Preminger's Best?

 

 

 

LAURA (1944)

Directed by Otto Preminger

20^th Century Fox, 88 minutes, pre-ratings system

(In black and white)

★★★★

 

This review originally ran in 2021. I offer it again as I am in the midst of films directed by Otto Preminger (1905-86). This version is lightly edited.

 

There are many reasons to prefer Laura for film noir fans wishing to discover/rediscover actress Gene Tierney. They begin with Otto Preminger. He was a legendary director, whereas various remakes by other directors, including a 1968 made-for-TV film were at best middle-of-the-road. I’ve never seen Fiona on Fire, a porn film based on Laura, but let us assume that Gene Tierney was a superior actress. Preminger had the sense to tantalize rather than fetishize. His noir classic in black and white exemplifies how films about shadowy characters should be done. Preminger dusted his frames with psychological theory rather than encasing them.

 

Laura is a study in obsession. It begins when New York City Police Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is assigned to a grisly murder scene. Wealthy advertising executive Laura Hunt (Tierney) is the presumed victim of a shotgun blast to the face. Although she was beautiful and accomplished, she also had a reputation for being difficult and ruthless, which means any of a number of people had motives to dispatch her. At first, McPherson centers his investigation on her snooty, no-account fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). Carpenter is a classic “kept man” with no discernible skills of his own, hence his motive for murder doesn’t add up. Maybe Hunt’s aunt, Ann Treadway (Judith Anderson), knows more than she lets on. She has also been bankrolling Carpenter and may have been having a side affair with him. There’s also a matter of a missing murder weapon and the ace in the hole: Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb). He’s a newspaper writer who “made” Laura by lifting her out of her uncultivated bumpkin ways, mentoring her, and showering her with expensive gifts, including her pricey apartment and most of its flashy appointments. Lydecker insists their relationship was non-sexual, but he speaks of Laura as if she is one of his possessions. 

 

McPherson finds himself making repeated trips to Laura’s apartment, and we soon suspect that his motive is to solve the crime because he has become creepily attracted to the large portrait of Laura hanging above the fireplace mantle. One night, McPherson falls asleep beneath her picture. When he awakes, Laura is standing before him!  It’s not a dream. McPherson concludes that the actual victim was one of Hunt’s models, Diane Redfern. McPherson arrests Laura for Redfern’s murder, a complication as he has fallen in love with Laura. Can he do his duty or will he help her, even if it means letting a murderer walk away? We know what Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade would do, but is McPherson cut from the same trench coat cloth? And is Laura actually guilty of anything?

 

Laura is a corkscrew mystery involving a cast of oil-covered, morality-challenged characters. Who, if anyone, is telling the truth? And where is the rifle that killed Diane Redfern?  I called it a study of obsession and that should be interpreted literally and broadly. It seems that everyone–especially Lydecker and McPherson–is obsessed with Laura. She, in turn, seems demure, but perhaps she’s infatuated with herself. Or maybe not!

 

The acting–though affected in 1940s’ ways–is superb, even Vincent Price and Tierney’s who at this stage of his career was a character actor more than a star. He’s quite good as Tierney’s castoff lover. The much-underappreciated Dana Andrews strikes the needed balance between believability and cheesy fascination, and Tierney scores as a raven-haired femme fatale. (Don’t believe those garish 1940s posters in which she’s colorized to look like a redhead!) Clifton Webb, though, comes close to stealing the glory. His is a performance that walks several lines, not the least of which is the thin one between utterly contemptible and wholly fascinating. For what it’s worth, elements of Preminger’s own personality can be read into Webb-as-Lydecker. One could easily become obsessed by this film. Several Preminger films are considered superior, but few surpass Laura.

 

Rob Weir

Anatomy of a Murder: Antique or Pathbreaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anatomy of a Murder (1959).

Directed by Otto Preminger

Columbia Pictures, 160 minutes, not rated.

★★★★

 

Americans like to believe that our justice system is mostly fair, especially when it comes to jury trials. Yet there are circumstances in which the verdict is open for conjecture. The 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder, though an old film, raises questions that remain relevant. I do caution, that as in most older movies, one must remember that today’s “normal” is often not that of earlier times.

 

Anatomy of a Murder takes place in the upper peninsula of Michigan and is loosely based upon a real case. A novel of the same name was written by “Robert Traver,” but that was the pen name of John Volker, a Michigan Supreme Court justice. Volker fictionalized a 1952 case in which he was a defense attorney. One of the most controversial situations for any criminal court, then or now, occurs when a defendant pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.

 

The movie involves a semi-retired folksy lawyer named Paul Biegler (Jimmy Stewart). Who would rather fish than lawyer. He is persuaded, though, to meet Army Lieutenant Frederick “Manny” Manion (Ben Gazzara). The facts are not in dispute. Manion walked into a bar and shoot Barney Quill. Biegler, though, thinks Manny was driven to blind fury; Manion claimed that Quill raped his wife, Laura (Lee Remick). Yet, given the statutes of the day, that’s not a defense. Biegler is reluctant to take the case until his former partner Parnell McCarthy (Arthur O’Connell), now the town drunkard, thinks Biegler should take the case. Did Parnell’s pledge of sobriety convince Paul to take Manny’s case, or was it that Laura is quite a looker?

 

The prosecution offers a plea deal to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. At the urging of Manny and Laura, Biegler says no deal. The trial is presided over by visiting judge from Lansing named Weaver (Joseph N. Welch). His appearance is one of many surprises in this film. If Joseph N. Welch sounds familiar, he was the lawyer who took on Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s in one of the first televised trials. McCarthy was impugning the reputation of a young man who Welch knew was innocent. It was Welch, who brought down McCarthy with a simple question: “Have you know, decency, sir? Have you at long last no decency?” That moment spearheaded McCarthy’s downfall. In Anatomy of a Murder, Welch plays a judge with a sense of humor, but he also attempts to run a tight ship.

 

This 1959 film is sometimes said to be the first American movie in which the words “rape” and “panties” were spoken aloud. The latter might induce a guffaw, but not so funny is that until 1994, it was acceptable to cite a woman’s provocative appearance as a mitigating factor in sexual assaults. Laura’s “sexy” attire consisted of wearing slacks and going about barelegged! Biegler faced some pretty fancy prosecutors, district attorney Lodwick (Brooks West) and a polished advisor from the Attorney General’s office, Claude Dancer (George C. Scott). They are the kind of attorneys that you might conjure today, sharply dressed, erudite, and keen cross-examiners. Anatomy of a Murder at times reminded me of screwball comedies directed by Frank Capra. This is especially the case when McCarthy and Biegler discover an 1886 precedent in Michigan that allowed for an “irresistible impulse” to be cited as a defense.

 

Who will win, the down-to-earth team of attorneys or the slick guys from the city? The case will turn on a few special witnesses not the least of which is Mary Pliant (Kathryn Grant). As in today’s insanity pleas, psychiatrists testify for both the defense and the prosecution. Not surprisingly, they came to different conclusions! One of the expert witnesses is Orson Bean, who older viewers will recognize. Music fans will spot Duke Ellington in a scene with Jimmy Stewart. Another delightful part, that a Biegler’s wisecracking secretary is played by Eve Arden, another who was famous in her day. In other words, this is a heavyweight cast.

 

You can watch Anatomy of a Murder two ways. It’s either a laughable antique, or a pathbreaking film whose frankness helped alter how sexual allegations are today handled in court. It probably won’t settle opposing views on insanity defenses.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing with Fire: Excellent Mystery, Terrible TV

 

So yes!

So no!

  

 

PLAYING WITH FIRE (2004)

By Peter Robinson

Avon Books, 405 pages.

★★★★★

 

I doubt I need to tell the readers of this blog that books are almost always superior to movies made about them. TV is a little bit more complex. We subscribe to Brit Box off and on. Right now, it’s on because we wanted to binge watch the excellent Shetland series, which is based on novels by Ann Cleeves. I liked the TV productions better. I was hopeful that the BBC series Inspector Banks would be equally good. Alas, no! Not even close.

 

To further test my belief, I re-read # 14 of the DCI Banks novels by author Peter Robinson, Playing with Fire. Then I watched the two-part BBC dramatization of the same book. I hated it! But to make sure I wasn’t overly biased because I loved the book so much, I watched a few episodes made from books I’ve not yet read. Same verdict. Part of it is that actor Stephen Tompkinson was unconvincing as DCI Alan Banks. His performances were so wooden that it often looked as if he knew he was miscast. He would have been better off playing a hard-boiled American detective the sort whom likes to throw his weight around. The problem is that Robinson’s Banks is both cerebral and on the world-weary side of life. He’s a music aficionado with a massive record collection and a near-photographic memory of who played with whom, which recordings are definitive, and can even recall labels and their catalog numbers. The genres seldom matter, as he loves rock, classical, punk, jazz, and opera. That guy isn’t Tomlinson.

 

I also fault the ITV’s production choices. Robinson’s writing is more subtle, even when presenting horrible situations. Playing with Fire involves a possible serial arsonist and begins when two canal boats are burned at their moorings in Yorkshire Dales. A burnt body is found in each. The first victim involves an investigation of its own as it was the home of a recluse surmised to be a painter because of the boat remains; the second is 16-year-old Tina Aspern, an emotionally damaged runaway who despises her stepfather. The first suspect is her boyfriend, Mark Siddons, who lived on the boat as well but spent the night in question in a pub and in the arms of another. He is wracked by guilt, both for his infidelity and for his belief that he could have saved Tina if he had been there. The stepfather, a doctor, is perfectly willing to believe that Mark, whom he sees as a rock-the-cradle freeloader, set the fire but Banks doesn’t think so. Is it because he believes Mark or that he sees something of his own son, Brian, in Mark? (Banks has long been divorced and his wife got custody of their two children. He has since been quite unlucky at love.)

 

Robinson gives us meticulous detail on how police investigate arson. Cranky egoist Geoff Hamilton shows how he knew that the first boat was set afire while Tina slept in the second one. That first boat’s resident was Thomas McMahon, who was indeed a local painter, but of little renown. This stands in marked contrast to the TV show, which goes for the gore, showing us McMahon’s charred body and Tina’s as a grotesque “floater.”

 

You name it and Banks’ life is complicated by it. Another fire, Mark’s preference for jail–he’s hard worker but also homeless after the fire–Tina’s stepfather’s arrogance, his own bumbled pursuit of DI Annie Cabot, the emergence of a possible lost painting by J. M. W. Turner, the fact that an old flame is dating an art expert who makes Banks queasy (or is it jealousy?), his sadness over Tina’s life (or is he projecting his daughter’s unsettled life onto Tina?), etc. In other words, the book is nuanced in every way the TV production is gratuitous.

 

As noted, I tried some other episodes as Playing with Fire is among my favorite of Robinson’s novels. My gut tells me that the TV series couldn’t (ahem!) hold a candle to the novels.

 

Rob Weir

Boomerang: Is Turnabout Fair Play?

  

 

BOOMERANG!  (1947)

Directed by Elia Kazan

20^th Century Fox, 88 minutes

★★ ½

 

I thought I had nearly exhausted the film noir collection at the Forbes Library until I found a listing titled “More Notorious Film Noir.” Some of them stretch the definition of film noir but if a movie keeps my attention, the label becomes secondary.

 

 Boomerang! is a film whose genre is debatable. It is a film noir or a crime drama? Some film historians call it a “docudrama,” a good compromise. This one dates from 1947 and is not the 1992 film of the same name starring Eddie Murphy. I remind you that it’s hard to copyright a movie title, so it’s not unusual for unrelated films to bear identical titles. The 1992 movie Boomerang was panned by critics and audiences alike, but the 1947 film starring Dana Andrews got three Oscar nominations. It was (and still is) an unusual production. 

 

 The “docu” part of the “drama” is that, with a few name changes, it parallels a real-life event. In 1924, Catholic priest Father Hubert Dahme was gunned down on the streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was well-liked and the public pressured law enforcement to solve the case. A World I vet was fingered for the crime, but the States Attorney concluded that police coerced a confession based on weak circumstantial evidence.  The attorney’s name was Homer Cummings, who went on to become the U.S. Attorney General (1933-39) under FDR and served three terms as mayor of Stamford, Connecticut, before going into private law practice.

 

 Director Elia Kazan echoed that narrative and in partnership with cinematographer Norbert Brodine made a film that looked like a documentary. They shot gritty street locations in Stamford and courtrooms in White Plains, New York, used music sparingly, and sought to preserve realistic police and courtroom procedures. In the film, the priest’s name is Father George Lambert and the States Attorney is Henry Harvery (Andrews). Richard Murphy’s screenplay added political twists that enhanced the drama. The “Reform” party has just turned out a longtime corrupt regime. The title Boomerang! comes from unexpected turnabouts and the manner in which it forced viewers to weigh questions of “dirty politics.” A central consideration is morality of using comparable low tactics against corrupt powers in the name of reform and overlook those who hold party purse strings. 

 

 Harvey is, at first, anxious to prosecute veteran and drifter John Waldron (Arthur Kennedy) for Father Lambert’s murder, but the more he contemplates the evidence–lineup identification, a generic gun, a confession–the more the case smells like rotten fish. Methods that today that are patently illegal were not so in 1947. Now, the moment an accused person asks for a lawyer, all police questioning must cease. Waldron was interrogated for two full days, beaten, and deprived of sleep until he “confessed.” As in 1924, police and the new reform government faced strong public demands to catch the killer. At a preliminary hearing, Harvey advises that he has changed his mind and moves that the case against Waldron be dropped. A veritable lynch mob is turned back by the police chief (Lee J. Cobb) but personal pressure is applied by reform party boss, real estate mogul Paul Harris (Ed Begley). He’s even willing to (mis) use a donation for a public park made by Henry’s wife, Madge (Jane Wyatt) to threaten the Harveys with homelessness. Will Henry relent or do what is just? Which will prevail, truth or power? Popularity or real reform? That Kazan would raise such issues is ironic given his role as a “friendly witness” during the House Un-American Activities Committee* five years later.

 

The acting in Boomerang! is uniformly strong, but I must warn that the script has holes that sometimes makes it hard to follow. It is, again, a period piece in which many standards and values differed from those of today, though the power of money might ring distressingly true. Kazan’s film style is long on verisimilitude, but its lack of flash can be jarring for modern film viewers. It’s not my favorite docudrama, but Boomerang! is worth watching.   

 

 Rob Weir

 

 * Kazan’s testimony during guilt-by-association HUAC hearings led numerous individuals to be blacklisted during the Second Red Scare. When Kazan received an honorary Oscar in 1999, many inside the auditorium turned their backs on him. It did not escape notice that, when pressured, Kazan opted to save his career instead of following the path of Harvey/Cummings.

The Book that Launched Ruth Ware: In a Dark, Dark Wood

 

 

 

 

IN A DARK, DARK WOOD (2015)

By Ruth Ware

Scout Press, 308 pages.

★★★★

 

Ruth Ware is among that small elite whose novels are declared “instant classics” and leaps onto lists of “best sellers” before they are actually released. She wasn’t always thus. Her first five books were young-adult fantasies about witches written under her full name, Ruth Warburton. Then she wrote In a Dark, Dark Wood and her career skyrocketed. Since she published it in 2015, NPR declared it the year’s best novel. It was optioned for both a movie and TV, though I don’t think the film was ever made. Nonetheless, Dark, Dark Wood made Ware a publisher’s dream: a writer whose books sell. She has written a book a year since 2015, an output upon which I will comment, but first let’s take a trip to the woods.

 

I read In a Dark, Dark Wood when it first came out and thought it a good thriller. That genre of novel seldom gets excessive praise from readers who claim they like “literature,” meaning thick classic literary works (usually English or Irish). They get reprinted by Penguin, usually in mouse type. I’ll bet, though, that many literary snobs secretly read Ruth Ware. Hers are heart-thumping reads that give you a bigger scare than most blood-gushing horror tales.

 

The main character is Leonora Shaw, a successful crime fiction writer living in London. It has been 10 years since college graduation, and she has been partnerless since her breakup with James Cooper at school. “Nora” enjoys city life, running, and solitude when she’s writing. To her surprise she gets an email asking if she’s like to attend a “hen” (bachelorette) party for Clare. Who? Sure enough, it’s little Ms Perfect–Clare Cavendish, a person she envied and sometimes hung out with in college. But the email is from “Flo,” who claims to be her best friend, though “Nora” (she was known as Lee or Leo in college) has never heard of Flo. The only friend from college Nora is still in touch with is Nina, now a doctor. They make a mutual pact to go, even though the party is at Flo’s aunt’s home in the Kielder Forest section of Northumberland. For two Londoners, that’s akin to asking them to vacation in Siberia. But at least Nina has a car; Nora doesn’t know how to drive.  

 

The home is actually very nice if you can picture an English version of colonial revival furnishing. Nora, who everyone calls “Lee,” though she corrects them, immediately wants to flee. It’s freezing cold along the Scottish Borderlands and creepy deep in the woods. To make matters worse, there is shaky Wi-Fi and the land line is unreliable. Just six people show up: Flo, Nora, Nina, Melanie (who has a six-month-old baby that she regrets leaving), and eventually Clare and Tom, a gay actor, who knows Clare from a fundraiser and the still-unknown bridegroom whom Tom knows from the theatre. Flo acts the role of the sheepdog who rounds up everyone for the kind of games and ice breakers that you’ve grown to hate since you were no longer 14. She has quiz and game challenges, a Ouija board, and even takes them skeet shooting (to Clare’s horror!). Even creepier, her outfits echo Clare’s as do many of her mannerisms. Nora runs in the forest, which empties out to the main road, and spends time with Nina complaining of her feelings of creepiness. An old gun said to be filled with blanks hangs about the mantlepiece–can you say Chekov’s gun–that Flo’s aunt uses to scare rabbits from the garden.

 

Strange things go bump in the night, unknown footprints in the snow, a banging open back door in the middle of the night, a Ouija board message, five frightened guests (Melanie bailed that morning), a gunshot, panic, and Clare’s full-speed sprint through the woods and brambles. When she comes to, she’s in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. When interviewed by the police she realizes that she’s a possible murder suspect. Who? How? Say what?

 

Again, this book was a massive hit for Ruth Ware and threw her into the book-a-year routine. If there’s anything popular culture demands, it’s milking a franchise until it’s spitting up blood. Ware is the mistress of novels about women feeling trapped, anxiety, gaslighting, and murder. To her credit, she changes settings and circumstances, though the loner woman is a repeated theme. Laura “Lo” Blackstock plays that role in The Woman in Cabin 11 (2016) and its (semi-) sequel The Woman in Suite 12 (2025), though the first was at sea and the latter in a blizzard-isolated Swiss luxury hotel. There is generally a reason why the protagonist can’t flee from danger: old and new lies that must be resolved –The Lying Game (2017), The Death of Mrs. Westaway (2018), The It Girl (2022)– or an entrapping remote location– the Scottish Highlands in Turn of the Key (2019), the French Alps in One by One (2020), an island cut off by a storm in One Perfect Couple (2024)…. As you can no doubt infer from titles, she often reworks or updates Agatha Christe novels. There are also traces of Daphne du Maurier.

 

But here’s the thing. I’ve read every one of Ware’s post-witch novels except Zero Days. Who can resist a TV reality show that turns into a deadly high-stake episode of Survivor (One Perfect Couple). Call her work formulaic–aren’t most novels? –but Ruth Ware knows her audience.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Sing Sing Humanizes the Incarcerated

 

  

SING SING (2024)

Directed by Greg Kwedar

A24, 107 minutes, R (language)

★★★★ ½

 

Sing Sing is one of the most infamous prisons in the United States. Located in Ossining, New York, it was once home to “Old Sparky” (electric chair), which dispatched 614 convicted criminals to the hereafter between 1891-1963.* Yet, it has also been the home to innovative programs such as a theatre project known as Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), which is the subject of this very fine and moving film. Director Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley wrote the screenplay with assistance from (among others) Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin and John “Divine G” Whitfield who were once inmates in Sing Sing and veterans of the RTA. Nine other actors also served time in Sing Sing.

On screen, we quickly learn that Divine G (Colman Domingo) is the star playwright, lead actor, and leading spirit of the RTA. The group has just finished a Shakespeare play under the direction of Brent Buell (Paul Raci). The group can’t decide on a new play, so G is tasked with writing a new one. He also tries to recruit Divine Eye (Maclin playing himself) into the RTA. To say Eye has attitude is an understatement. He’s innately intelligent but inside the joint he’s a don’t-mess-with-me loner and tough guy. He says he wants nothing to do with RTA but G knows a phony when he sees one. G discusses matters with his cellmate “Mike Mike” (Sean San Jose) and follows his advice to challenge Divine Eye. He does and Eye shows up as the group discusses what G should write. Eye is all bad news, but it is he who suggests a comedy.

A comedy indeed. How do you feel about some of the greatest stage soliloquies stitched together in a comedic romp? How will G react to Brent’s decision to cast Eye in the play’s only dramatic role? G is shaken, but he reluctantly becomes Eye’s tutor. To simplify a whole lot of moving story development, the two also become friends, especially after Mike Mike dies of an aneurysm. Can you say “a star is born behind bars?” G will also tutor Eye in writing his clemency appeal and about losing the chip on his shoulder. But, like many of us, G is smarter in giving advice than in assessing his own situation.

G is also up for clemency and despite glowing recommendations from prison staff and administrators, makes two fatal mistakes. First, he insists that another person did the crime for which he has been incarcerated. Second, he takes credit for the RTA in a prideful way. The lead commissioner of the clemency board (Sharon Washington) asks him if he thinks he is a good actor, G says he’s learned a lot about acting from Brent and the RTA. Her next question is, “Are you acting now?” G is stunned and instantly aware that he has screwed up. It’s a clemency hearing after all, meaning an appeal for forgiveness. Sure enough, his request is denied. It stings even more when Divine Eye’s appeal is granted and he is released.

G is hurt and reacts like Eye might have. In the following weeks he says the RTA is BS, swears, rips up his cell, tries to provoke Eye, gets tossed into solitary, and isolates himself when he’s out. But RTA is in his soul; he apologizes and resumes RTA duties. When he is paroled seven years later, guess who greets him on the outside.

Cinematographer Pat Scola is an unsung hero in making Sing Sing., which garnered praise in festivals and independent cinemas. Colman got a Best Actor nomination and Maclin a Best Supporting Actor nod. Neither won, but merely getting nominated is pretty amazing for a film made for less than $2 million and featuring former prisoners. Scola’s camera humanizes the men inside the “joint” and lingers on how relationships are built under stressful and depressing situations. Scola and Kwedar also had the good luck to get inside the Downstate Correctional Facility** months after it was decommissioned. Sing Sing does appear in the film, but only its exteriors as it still houses nearly 1,600 prisoners. Downstate looked and felt like the inside of a real medium/maximum prison, complete with cellblocks, heavily screened views of life outside, and drab interiors.*** Scola’s use of 16 mm filmstock gives the film a gritty, grainy look.

I highly recommend this film, as it’s truly a superior effort. My only beef is that mixing professional actors with ex-cons often makes interactions too polite, a veritable Hawthorne effect.

 

Rob Weir

* New York abolished its death penalty.

** If you driven west on I-84, the razor-wired Downstate facility is on your right. It was closed in 2002. On your left you will see the older Fishkill Correctional Facility, which still jails medium- and maximum-security prisoners because it’s larger.

*** I know something about the inside of prisons as I once worked in probation/parole services.