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Capturing the Friedmans
Directed by Andrew Jarecki
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There have been many documentaries that startle and move: Harlen County, Shoah, and The Sorrow and the Pity come to mind; and they are great films as well as important social documents. But it's rare that a documentary can not only startle us emotionally but dazzle us with its filmmaking and make us rethink how we watch movies.

There's no doubt that Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Freidmans is a powerful documentary, if only because of its hard, unflinching take on its explosive subject matter. But as a piece of film, it's also much more. In its opening sequences of interviews with the Friedman family the movie begins gently enough, but within 15 minutes we are pushed onto an emotional and sociological roller-coaster ride.

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The Friedmans were an upper-middle-class Jewish family who lived in Great Neck, Long Island. There is Arnold and Elaine, and their three sons-- David, Seth, and Jesse. On the day before Thanksgiving in 1987 their lives are disrupted by the police, who arrest Arnold on charges of mailing and receiving child porn. But this is just the beginning. Deciding that owning porno is just the tip of the pedophile iceberg, the police begin to question the students in Arnold's home computer classes (he is also a respected high school teacher) and uncover what they are convinced is a massive scandal involving hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of boys and dozens of victims. Arnold is arrested. Soon after, his youngest son-- 18-year-old Jesse-- is also arrested on the same charges. The film takes us through not only their legal trials but the essential dissolution of the family itself.

On one simple level, Capturing the Friedmans is gripping because this material is great. As we see-- through interviews with the police, lawyers, and prosecutors-- the charges against Arnold and Jesse are blatantly false. There is no evidence, the statements of the "victims" were clearly obtained through pressure and coercion, the political process is totally corrupt and pandering to popular prejudice. Like the famous McMartin preschool fiasco, the case against Arnold and Jesse Friedman is an appalling miscarriage of justice. When it is exposing this social injustice, Capturing the Friedmans is a terrific film in the great muckraking tradition.

But Capturing the Friedmans goes so much further. Because the Friedmans themselves were fanatical about self-documentation, Andrew Jarecki had access to the most incredible film and video (and audio) footage imaginable. This includes not simply the expected summer vacations, birthday parties, and family seders, but documentation of the most intimate family moments: horrific fights between Elaine and her sons about her relationship with Arnold, family planning sessions about how to handle the upcoming trials, moving scenes of the family pulling together that are immediately contradicted by disengagements and more fights. It is impossible to imagine a more painful exploration of the disintegration of a family.

But just when we think that Jarecki has taken us far enough, Capturing the Freidmans pushes even further. Half-way through the film a series of astonishing revelations begin to emerge, and as quickly as we can comprehend them, they are contradicted by statements from other family members (including Arnold's gay brother Howard). By the end of the film we are completely emotionally drained and depleted.

Other filmmakers might have spent most of their time on exploring whether the charges against Arnold and Jesse Friedman were true, but Jarecki wisely avoids this-- in part because the charges are so obviously false that even to have this discussion is to lend credence where none is due. An astute filmmaker, Jarecki knows that the real drama here is in documenting not simply the legal proceedings but the inner lives of those they effect.

We are privy to family fights in which the sons scream at their mother that she never loved their father enough. We see interviews with Elaine in which she speaks painfully of her husband's failings as a sexual partner. We see footage of what appears to be perfectly happy family outings. Through all this we cannot help but be moved, and a little frightened. There are points in the film where it is difficult to believe that any family would want to document-- essentially as home movies-- such intensely self-revealing and distressing moments. It isn't like watching the proverbial train wreck because we have to admire the nerve and resilience of this family to deal with a horrific situation.

At times it is almost too agonizing to watch this family footage; we feel implicated in it, both appalled and overly involved. By its end, the film has pushed us into a personal space so private that we question if we should even be there. But of course not only should we, we must be if we are to deal with issues raised by the film. Because so much is left unfinished here-- not the question or Arnold and Jesse's innocence, but of the complicated affairs of the human heart and the enormous stretches and limits to love and affection-- Capturing the Friedmans is a complicated and emotionally difficult film that pushes us to places we would never think of going.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com