Review of Capturing the Friedmans (2003) by Scott D — 08 Apr 2004

[u][i]Capturing the Friedmans[/i] (Andrew Jarecki, 2003)[/u].

In 1987, Arnold Friedman, an ordinary, mousy computer instructor (he had won awards for his teaching) from Great Neck, Long Island, NY, was visited by the police. It seemed he had received a package of illegal pornography - it featured preadolescent boys - in the mail. This news shocked the peaceful, suburban community of Great Neck, and, eventually, the police go on to accuse Arnold of raping dozens of young students in his basement computer class. Then Arnold's teenage son, Jesse, is accused along with his father of participating in the sexual abuse, and the whole case expands into a full-blown media sensation.

The engaging, in-depth documentary [b]Capturing the Friedmans[/b] chronicles this case and the emotional fallout from it, but the movie's tagline - "Who do you believe?" - is misleading. Although the cops, the victims, and the Friedman family all get to have plenty of say, and the "evidence" is all presented (there was never any physical evidence), [i]Capturing the Friedmans[/i] is too ambiguous to work as a definitive whodunit. (We don't even know for sure if it was done at all.) The film wisely avoids taking sides, and no one here - accusors or accused - seems to be without some kind of agenda. Who do we believe? It's hard to know.

The real strength of this documentary (another good addition in a very strong year for non-fiction films) is as an intimate portrait of the fractious Friedman family and a fascinating look at media sensationalism. It shows us a man not completely guilty or innocent, but a man with possibly dark desires deep down in his heart who has been torn apart by a shady justice system and the media - which thrives on depravity, spectacle, and hysteria - because of them. It also brilliantly employs highly intimate camcorder footage shot by the Friedmans themselves (they were notorious camcorder junkies) to show the emotional impact of this whole calamity on the rest of the family: Elaine, Arnold's worried and hesitant wife, along with their other two sons, Seth and David. The Friedmans are revealed as a "nice" suburban Jewish family bound by love, but torn apart by dark secrets, betrayal, an invasive justice system, and their own voyeuristic camcorder obsessions - they're a family nearly as twisted in their closeness as that in [i]Crumb[/i], and [i]Capturing the Friedmans[/i] brings their dramatic story to compelling life. [b]B+[/b].