Capturing the Friedmans (2003) Reviews

• An assault on our expectations of truth

  howard.schumann2003-08-18

  In 1987, Great Neck, Long Island, a comfortable upper middle class town, was rocked when Arnold Friedman, a respected high school teacher and his 18-year old son, Jessie were arrested on charges of molestation, rape, and sodomy against young boys to whom they taught computer classes in their basement. The documentary Capturing the Friedmans is a dark and disturbing look at the Friedman family (Arnold, sons David, Jessie, Seth and their mother Elaine) that compels us to sift through the ambiguous evidence and determine for ourselves the question of their guilt or innocence. "It's a combination of different versions of different stories", says first-time director Andrew Jarecki, who assembled video footage filmed by eldest son David, news accounts, still photos, and his own original material, and turned it into one of the most powerful films of the year. The documentary was conceived by Mr. Jarecki after working on a piece about "Silly Billy" (David Friedman), the number one birthday clown in New York City. He found David to be a sad clown underneath the happy face and began to probe deeper, ultimately discovering the arrest, court case, and David's obsessive home videos documenting the family's deterioration. The first glimpse we get is a video of the happy family having fun at the beach. We are soon jolted by the revelation that Arnold collects child pornography magazines. After being alerted by the postal authorities, the police search his house and find a printout of a list of students he taught computer literacy. Former students are tracked down and interviewed, and Arnold and his son Jessie are accused of committing hundreds of acts of sex with their students. Listening to the Police Department, one might conclude that they are guilty, but as the film progresses doubts are raised about the validity of this conclusion. We are told that there was a complete lack of physical evidence, that witnesses may have been hypnotized, possibly coerced to give information and that some students denied anything ever took place. I began to question. If there was all of this going on, why didn't any child speak up or complain of a stomachache and refuse to go back? Why did they re-enroll for the advanced course? Everyone is convincing on camera but we are left scratching our heads wondering what is fantasy and what is truth. Both Arnold and Jessie maintain their innocence, although Arnold admits to being a pedophile and molesting two boys at the family's summer home as well as his younger brother Howard. Though Arnold received a life sentence and Jessie was released after serving 13 of his 18-year sentence, it is equally plausible that they were completely innocent, somewhat innocent, or completely guilty. While dissecting the inner workings of the family, Jarecki looks into the nature of memory to such an extent that Capturing the Friedmans is an assault on our expectation of truth. We expect the case to unfold with a clear identification of the perpetrators and victims, that some revelation of intimacy will arise from home videos of the family's unguarded moments, but our desires are never fulfilled. We are tantalized, still seeking the missing piece to the puzzle. Though we may never know about Arnold's or Jessie's guilt or innocence, to me the family was a disaster waiting to happen, having bottled up inside of them years of anguish and guilt. At the end, I felt tremendous sadness that we do not always have the emotional strength to act in our own best interests, to admit our vulnerability to each other, or operate in a way that nurtures our capacity to love. For the Friedmans, the legacy of this failure is a stigmatized life and painful memories that will remain forever.

• Andrew Jarecki's `Capturing the Friedmans' is as real as hidden family dysfunction could be on film.

  jdesando2003-06-25

  Forget TV reality shows: Andrew Jarecki's `Capturing the Friedmans' is as real as hidden family dysfunction could be on film. Out of a seemingly-normal Great Neck, N.Y., middle-class family comes a tale too unique to be discounted: Honored teacher father and boyish son are charged with molesting young boys who attended dad's after-school computer class. It's known that dad reads child pornography, but the questionable molesting becomes a crisis fulcrum for the entire film. `Friedman's' is unique for 2 reasons: 1. Better than almost all other documentaries, even `Paradise Lost,' it reveals the ambiguity and uncertainty in most litigation. 2. It uses copious home movies to reveal the major characters at play and rest without helping to determine guilt or innocence. Jarecki, a co-founder of the Internet site, Moviefone, has admitted that after all the hours of interviews and miles of footage, he is not certain about the guilt of the father and son. Even the homemade family film, filled with slapstick and confession, is either so disingenuously crafted by another son to create the uncertainty or so naive as to be believable. With that ambiguity, ironies abound: Award-winning teacher Arnold has a sleazy secret life centering around the very students he is guiding; Arnold's ex-wife is so remote from this male-dominated family that she may not have had a clue, yet her reunion with Jesse after his prison term is amazingly joyful and honest; son Jesse disclaims helping dad with the molestations yet confesses in the end, he says, because the law and the town are stacked against him. Most fascinating to me, an amateur chronicler of my own family, is the Friedman's (and by inference, America's) obsession with documentation. The night before dad goes to prison is videotaped; the night before Jesse's incarceration, brother David records him in various poses, most of them loose and sometimes laced with self-deprecation. Jesse is videotaped outside the courthouse the day of his confession dancing a jig and generally goofing. Is this nervous energy, an act to neutralize a fear of imprisonment or an egregious act meant to outrage the judge and jury? Ambiguity rules here. David, the narrator brother, leads his life as Silly Billy, the most sought after birthday clown in new York. The irony is rich. I don't know if I can ever believe what I see again. I do know I will more carefully watch every documentary from this day forward. This one unambiguously deserved the 2003 Sundance grand jury prize.

• The Friedmans Weren't Captured, They Submitted Entirely

  lawprof2003-07-06

  Documentaries that focus on the lives of their subjects are intrinsically voyeuristic. The documentarian must be objective while often prone to being seductively enmeshed in his/her subjects' views of their lives. "Capturing the Friedmans" takes this reality to a much deeper and excruciatingly raw level. Long before Arnold Friedman, a deeply respected and retired high school teacher who moved on to teaching computer skills when PCs were rare, and one of his son's, Jesse, became defendants in a widely reported and still remembered pedophile case, filming and taping each other was a family staple. What starts as a not uncommon family avocation turns infinitely darker as several of the family members seem compelled to record disturbing intra-family encounters that both enthrall and repel. Based on a U.S. Post Office investigation leading to a search of the Friedman's Great Neck, N.Y. home it is immediately clear that the pater familias at the least was a dedicated, devoted collector of sickening homosexual kiddie porn. On that charge at the least he was fully eligible for and deserved a long prison sentence. But the initial investigation yielded verbal complaints by boys that they were sexually abused during the computer training sessions in the Friedman home by both Arnold and his son, Jesse. Also living in the house were his wife, Elaine, and two other boys, David and Seth. The police investigation led to myriad charges lodged against both Arnold and Jesse and the legal proceedings drew national media attention (which I well remember). No forensic evidence existed to link either Friedman to the crimes let alone establish that they had occurred. All the evidence, which was never tested in court, came from kids questioned by police and, apparently in many instances, the kids were seriously encouraged by outraged parents who, themselves, had no factual basis on which to proceed. Both Friedmans eventually and separately pleaded guilty to reduced charges. Arnold went to prison and subsequently committed suicide, leaving Jesse $250,000 in insurance proceeds. Jesse, who maintains his innocence to this day, served thirteen years of a six to eighteen year sentence. One son, Seth, refused to participate in this project. The other son, David, is a high society children's birthday party clown in New York City known as "Silly Billy." He worries in the film if his career will be affected. How could it not be, especially as he is the angriest speaker on the screen. And not the most rational either. On many levels this is a deeply disturbing film. First, the family members who cooperated by giving film to the director and allowing very free-wheeling interviews reflect the reality of a hopelessly dysfunctional family, people who had deep troubles long before the postal police showed up with a search warrant. Elaine is alternately revealing and guarded but it's clear that her union with the popular Arnold was disturbed, emotionally, sexually and even in terms of practical matters like childrearing. The family films show the deterioration of the sons' relationship with their mother whom they hotly blame for supposedly not standing behind their father. She is savagely abused verbally in scene after scene. Arnold remains a very passive, almost detached witness of his family's self-immolation as he and Jesse await possible trials and almost certain imprisonment. At one point Arnold appears to be nothing more than an onlooker as his sons tear into his wife who gives back a spirited defense. The most sympathetic character is Arnold's brother who can not recall Arnold's admitted and hardly self-serving statement that he engaged in sex with him when they were little kids. The brother's anguish about the dissolution of the family is heartfelt and affecting. He truly is a victim. Beyond all the family sturm und drang is the legal story and it's troubling. This case took place while accustations of child abuse in daycare facilities flew through the headlines. An expert debunker of many such cases is on screen to offer her views. She resolves nothing but plants a kernel of doubt as to the state's case. It is clear, however, that there were more than a few instances when the rule of law succumbed to a miasmic hysteria. A greater injection of skepticism comes from the back-to-back explanations by two involved detectives as to how to question juveniles who might have been victimized by sexual predators. One has the right answer, the other a technique proven to lead to false accusations. What followed the investigation was the loding of so many charges against each defendant as to constitute an extraordinary episode of overcharging. Overcharging - hitting a defendant with every conceivable charge and instance of its commission - is common. It gives police much credit for clearing cases and prosecutors leverage in getting a plea deal. In the case of the Friedmans the plethora of charges, as opposed to whether each or both committed heinous offenses, is simply unbelievable. As even the prosecutor admits, not one child was injured or crying when picked up by parents at the home/computer school yet some claimed to have been anally sodomized dozens of times. That's just not possible. What "Capturing the Friedmans" shows is that when a defendant like Jesse recants after pleading to so many counts it's impossible to ever be sure whether the allocution required at the guilty plea hearing was genuine or, as Jesse later claims, the inevitable needed confession for the best deal he could get to avoid life in prison. My view as an experienced lawyer is that both were guilty of SOME offenses against young boys. Jesse's protestations of innocence have the scent of the eternally unrepentant malefactor. But I can't prove it and neither could the documentarian. Arnold's starting point as a fervid consumer of kiddie porn magazines makes it easier to believe he graduated to the next step. But, again, whether a jury could have so concluded beyond a reasonable doubt is something we can never know. David's defense of his dad and brother is so emotional and projected with the weight of many repetitions over the years as to be worthless. We will never know what actually happened. This glimpse into the lives of an affluent family whose home life was rocky before the accusations is haunting, troubling. It demands that we think about what we do in the vital and right but sometimes off-kilter attempts to protect the young and punish their violators. 9/10.

• gripping but frustrating documentary

  Buddy-512004-04-03

  Just one of the many outstanding documentaries of 2003, `Capturing the Friedmans' is a riveting, depressing and ultimately quite frustrating account of a pedophile and the effect he has on his community and family. In 1984, Arnold Friedman, a highly respected husband, parent and teacher living with his wife and three sons in an affluent suburb of northern Long Island, was arrested on more than a hundred charges of child molestation, purportedly committed while he and his youngest son, Jesse, were running a computer class (for boys only apparently) out of the family's home. Jesse, 18 at the time, was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sodomy as well. `Capturing the Friedmans' looks back not only at the trial and the circumstances surrounding it, but attempts to come to grips with how all of this affected each of the family members and the community at large. By combining present day interviews featuring several of the family members as well as some of the law enforcement officials involved in the case with glimpses of the family's life caught on film and videotape both before and after the arrest, director Andrew Jarecki creates a fascinating view of a family and a community torn asunder by crisis. We witness how each member of the family reacts to the situation. The older sons close ranks and remain faithful to their father while the mother attempts to distance herself from the crisis at hand. We see the denial and the enabling that are common in situations such as this one, as well as the way in which deep-seated and hitherto hidden feelings of anger and resentment can suddenly break forth and rise to the surface. Because the Friedmans' sons were obsessed with videotaping the events of their lives, the filmmakers had a plethora of highly revealing clips to choose from in weaving their grim but insightful tapestry. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of `Capturing the Friedmans' is that, even though the filmmakers acknowledge Arnold to be a pedophile, they obviously have grave doubts that the crimes for which he and his son were ultimately convicted ever really occurred. And, indeed, the scope, elaborateness and longevity of the alleged sexual abuse and the lack of prior reporting by any of the children who were the alleged victims do raise some troubling questions of credibility and plausibility in the viewer's mind. In fact, this whole case has eerie and disturbing echoes of the highly publicized McMartin Preschool trial, which was happening at roughly the same time. Even the people the filmmakers interview often contradict one another, leaving the audience not knowing who is telling the truth and who is lying – either deliberately or, perhaps, subconsciously. It is this air of inconclusiveness that accounts for the viewer's feeling of frustration at the end. Although the moviemakers' sympathies seem to lie more with the family than with the court, we can't help thinking that maybe no one is really telling the whole truth and that perhaps the reality, as is so often the case in life, lies somewhere in between. If nothing else, `Capturing the Friedmans' serves as a reminder of just how messy and complicated an issue child molestation can be. With emotions running so high on both sides of the issue and the consequences so devastating for all the parties involved, the film at least shows that convictions in such cases must be pursued with the utmost rationality, rigor and care. Whatever the truth in this case may be, the fact remains, though, that Arnold Friedman's actions led to the disintegration of a family and an undeniable human tragedy.

• Thought-provoking, sad, and compelling

  bondgirl67812004-10-02

  I rented Capturing the Friedmans out of curiosity. I have read about these child molestation cases made during the eighties in which many innocent people were sent to jail because of the incompetency and lack of experience the cops had in dealing with these cases. The documentary centers around the destruction of a family after Arnold Friedman (patriarch) and the youngest son, Jesse, are accused of committing horrible acts against children. Arnold Friedman as it turned out was into kiddie porn and he got busted and then led to a series of accusations made against him by his students. The documentary uses footages filmed by the Friedmans that captured all the events and reactions during the trial. It was like the film Happiness, but only real. Watching the film I saw glimpses under the surfaces of these seemingly "normal and happy" people. The eldest son, David, is angry and in denial of his father's homosexuality and pedophilia. Elaine Friedman is a woman who had lost all identity of herself and eventually begins to turn on David (who still resents his mother to this day), Seth (the middle son) refused to be interviewed for the documentary but he is shown in the features. What is fascinating and even laughable is how the cops who were handling the case were incompetent and they coerced the "victims" with the exception of one "victim" whose face and name are anonymous. I for one analyzed and found that while Arnold Friedman may have been the one that was guilty I felt sorry for him and yet angry. He knew that his own guilt and his own perversions were not only convicting him, but they were putting his family in danger and they were the ones in trial. I don't think that Jesse Friedman did anything nor was he abused by his father. I am sure that Arnold may have played out his fantasies in his head and possibly with one or two children, but I do not think he made any advances against or even harmed his sons. I felt that the real bad guys were the lawyers and the cops who investigated and coerced the testimonies of the children interviewed and the majority of the children who accused Arnold and Jesse Friedman later on recanted their testimonies and said that nothing happened and that they only said what they said to make the interviews stop. Hell, a parent even said that a police officer threatened his son into testifying against the Friedmans. If you are a psychology or criminology major than this is a great film to study. It is also sad because we see a family being ripped apart by secrets that are convicting them and putting them before the public. Capturing The Friedmans is a fascinating character study and a devastating one to watch.