A documentary about the witch hunt that sent five
innocent black teens to jail for rape.
For some reason,
I've been hesitant to watch When They See Us. It's sort of a mix of things.
Timing for one. It was released during the busiest time of the year for quality
TV. The deadline for Emmy consideration is the end of May, so many networks
plan to have their shows on or ending by then. Or, if you are a streamer like
Netflix, you drop entire series right at the deadline. I'm also holding out to
see if it does get any Emmy attention*. I'm going to be very annoyed if this
gets snubbed by the Emmys, because people will learn the wrong lessons from
it...again. You see, Ava Duvernay's wonderful movie Selma had a similar
problem. It released way too late in the year, and as a result, way
underperformed on Oscar nomination morning. The lesson should've been that the
release strategy was bad, but the narrative ended up being more about race. Perhaps
I really am just naive, but I blame a poor release strategy much more for the
lack of results for Selma. Similarly, I fear that if When They See Us
fails to gain Emmy traction, the narrative will look very similar (poor release
strategy vs. racial story). Because, movie screeners are much easier to watch
than multi-part series, and the Emmy voters are notoriously complacent. I guess
what I'm saying is, I'd like to stay out of the whole discussion for as long as
possible.
*Note: I'm writing
this well before Emmy nominations are announced, but I won't be posting before
it. This will already be out of date, which I'm fine with.**
**When they see us
did pretty well in Emmy nominations, so it looks like it worked out. Now I don't
have an excuse to skip it.
That said, I
wasn't very familiar with the Central Park Five story and wanted to be. I think
a friend told me this was streaming*. And it's a Ken Burns doc. You can't miss
with those. Not surprisingly, this was a very good documentary. It tells the
story from beginning to end, gives context where its needed, and does so in a
fairly brief 2 hours. It's certainly more of a snapshot than a deep dive. There
are so many things I'd like to know more about: the interrogation tactics, the
media narrative about "wilding", why Trump was involved, and the five
young men's time in prison to name a few. Perhaps I'll get a narrative version
of that in When They See Us that would be satisfying. I'm fine with this
amount for now though.
*Let's be honest:
I probably heard it on a podcast, but saying I have friends sounds better.
I like the way the movie dispassionately takes
sides. It's clear that Burns and his co-directors are in defense of the Central
Park Five, but, probably thanks to the fact that they are 100% proven innocent,
the doc lets the facts do the convincing. For example, early on it throws out
the fact that there was a serial rapist in the area who the cops don't connect
the crime to, but the doc waits to bring it up again when it becomes pertinent
at the end. There's definitely a version of this documentary that would beat me
over the head with the facts. I appreciate that this doesn't.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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