CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS (NOT RATED) ***1/2

Directed by Andrew Jarecki. 107 minutes.

A documentary featuring: David Friedman, Arnold Friedman, Jesse Friedman, and Elaine Friedman. Released by HBO Documentary Pictures and Magnolia Pictures.

Who would have expected a searing, emotionally rattling, and bound to be controversial film from Andrew Jarecki, first time filmmaker and CEO of Moviefone? Whether the fascinating subject matter of his film or instead his skills as a documentarian are what have brought about such success with Capturing the Friedmans most likely remains to be seen, but Jarecki’s nonjudgmental stance documenting of a middle class upstate New York family’s destruction is powerful and potent nonetheless. The filmmaker really does not choose sides in this documentary or, if he does he has elaborately disguised his opinion. Enough “evidence,” or a better word might be circumstantial occurrence, is present to support both sides here and audiences, no doubt, that had a hard time determining the innocence or guilt of O.J. Simpson will never come to a conclusion here. I certainly have not yet.

The film, strangely enough, started out as a document of a completely other thing- New York birthday clowns. David Friedman, one of the Friedman family sons and, at times, main character of the film, started working on a film with Jarecki some time ago about his job as a New York birthday clown. David is actually the number one in his profession in the state of New York. After some time passed, Friedman let the filmmaker in on a secret- a big one. His father, Arnold Friedman, an honored and highly awarded upstate New York computer teacher, and younger brother, Jesse, had been arrested, put on trial, and sentenced to prison terms for sexually assaulting children in the home computer class that Arnold taught. As the “evidence” in the case comes to the light, we as an audience, shift back and forth to whom we really believe. Both sides seem pretty believable and yet both sides have numerous things weighing them down.

For starters, Arnold and Jesse, at points, seem incredibly guilty. Arnold is actually busted with child pornography in his home- lots of it. He also later admits to being turned on by young boys and, during an interview at a prison, according to his lawyer, he asks to move when he finds himself becoming aroused by a little boy nearby visiting his father. Jesse is convinced (or not, we don’t really know), for a short while, that his father sexually abused him as a child. From this information, it would almost seem definite that the accused performed the alleged sex crimes.

However, there is never any proof of the crimes. Much of the testimony from the children appears to be forced or persuaded as if the incriminating magazines automatically prove that Arnold is guilty. Some of the victims, much older now, admit that they do not remember anything happening to them and that the police told their parents years ago that they had been molested. When they responded that they had not, the police gave them the “yes you were” sort of answer. A professional comments that in cases where hysteria sets in because of the nature of the crimes apparently committed, people want to use hypnotherapy in order to “bring back” old memories. This appears harmful though because it seems that memories are created while the patient is hypnotized. Many of the alleged victims who claim that they do not remember anything happening suddenly have memories after the therapy as if the police planted them there for them. Another victim almost seems to be bragging about his being assaulted.

The interviews with the sex crime unit covering the case and the postal worker who set Arnold up by sending him child pornography are even more unsettling. The zealotry of the crime unit, in which one member nearly admits to coaxing testimonies out of children, causes them to move forward with the arrest of Arnold Friedman and son, resulting in the destruction of the family members lives, without any substantial evidence. The postal worker seems terribly proud to have busted Friedman and spends most of his time bragging about it. The Friedmans, it might seem, had people out to get them from the beginning. What would explain this? Well, perhaps the fact that nearly everybody interviewed admits that the town of Great Neck where the incidents take place is extremely cliquey. Or maybe that, once the accusations began to fly, the town took sides of victims and non-victims. Some residents even said things along the lines of “your child may have been molested x number of times, but mine was molested more.”

Watching the Friedmans, through the celluloid photo album that Arnold kept, using the photography medium to its fullest, and seeing their destruction is often horrible, horrifying, and fascinating from son David’s video diaries that he began keeping after the arrest in which he asks the camera to leave him alone to the interviews with Elaine, the character whom I felt sorry for most because of the lack of love she seemed to get from her husband and the constant victim of the male household members teaming up against her (even years later in the interviews with David, a terrible hostility appears to be aimed at her). Strangely enough, the Friedmans managed to document enough footage from the point when they were convicted up to the present as if they were admitting their fears, angers, hopes, even sins, and maybe guilt to their home video camera for people to witness years later.

The film is a mixture of family footage and talking-head interviews with Elaine, David, and Jesse (other son, Seth, did not wish to participate and Arnold is now deceased). As the film moves along, its characters become more and more melancholy and eventually hopeful, angrier, etc. Much of the documented footage between the 1970s and late 80s is quite haunting from the footage of the family at play together to the screaming fits taking place that went recorded unnoticed or without the family members caring as the trial approaches within the house.

The fact that the film is nonjudgmental about the case makes it work all the better. I am truly unsure as to whether Jarecki believes the Friedmans, does not believe with them and sympathizes with some of them, or does not believe them but cannot pass up the opportunity to document such material. Other members of the community are certainly torn- some willing to crucify the Friedmans without a second thought, others wanting to think twice before ruining the lives of a prominent teacher and his family. Debbie Nathan, an investigative reporter who apparently believes in the Friedmans innocence, comments on the case, claiming that a topic that causes such hysteria as pedophilia leaves little sympathy to the accused from their community, regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent. Small American communities, one person comments, walks a thin line between pornography and Puritanism. Regardless of what conclusions these various people come to, regardless of what audiences or critics believe, Capturing the Friedmans is a truly momentous film. Either way the pendulum swings-guilty or innocent- the Friedmans’ story is powerful and unnerving.