Capturing The Friedmans [2004] [DVD]

I only rented the main feature through the Amazon rental scheme, so cannot comment on the extra features on Disc 2. Having said this, I wish that I had rented both discs as watching the film left me absolutely intrigued by the case and wanting to know more.
For the movie itself - it is an incredibly involving and at times shocking insight into how a seemingly ordinary family is torn apart by allegations of child abuse brought against the father and youngest son in the Friedman family. While the allegations themselves seem highly implausible, your certainty about this is always being undercut by potentially relevant evidence the other way. For example, the revelation that Arnold Friedman admitted to 2 incidents of instances where "he took liberties" with young boys when on summer vacation at his beach house, also the suggestion that he had a coercive relationship with his younger brother aged 8 when he was 11. While the brother himself denies this flatly, I am not sure that anyone would be brave enough to be filmed on a documentary - with his partner sat next to him all the while, although this is only suggested late in the movie when the camera fades out to a wider view as opposed to a talking head - admitting to this.
What was most fascinating was the footage filmed by one of the brothers in the time after Arnold had been arrested. The family pretty much divides along gender lines, with the boys vehemently denying that the allegations could be true with the mother saying that "she does not know." There is the whole issue of whether there was almost an unspoken compact between the father and the sons he had potentially abused versus the mother on the outside of this relationship. This comes into focus in the disputed version of events between Jesse and his lawyer when plea bargaining - the lawyer stating that Jesse admitted that his father had regularly abused him while he was growing up while Jesse states that the lawyer suggested he testify in this way to get a reduced sentence. Some of the denial from the oldest son, David, seemed so strident that I wondered whether this was part of a blocking mechanism.
What really made the film gripping was the absence of the main character (and one of the brothers) who the allegations were levelled against, Arnold Freeman. By the time the film was made, he had committed suicide, so the director could not ask him. Even while he was on film at home after the arrest had been made but before he was sentenced, he seems to have very little to say about what has happened while all around him are arguing and tearing strips out of each other. You could read this as the weary response of a beaten man. Alternatively, it could be the reaction of a man who knows he has done something wrong, though quite what we will never know. Interestingly, the one time in the film where he looks relaxed and happy with his family is the night before he received sentencing.
Arnold Freeman obviously was a paedophile, as the shocking testimony of one witness shows when he got excited by a 4 year while he was being visited in prison, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the charges against him were valid as many of the witnesses who testified against him appeared in the film to state that they were pretty much led by police and prosecutors to give the desired answers, especially the witness whose memories of abuse came from recovered memory therapy.
I do not know what the truth was after watching this film but I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who wants an intelligent, thought provoking and moving documentary. The interview with the film maker after the feature is also very worth watching. I will be watching the movie again before I send it back in the light of his comments.

Watching this documentary is an amazing and potentially exhausting experience. In summary, the film centres on a family (the Friedmans - father, mother, 3 sons) who live in Great Neck, Long Island. The father and one of the sons are accused of molesting students of a voluntary computer class which is run at the family home after school in the early 1980s.

Amazingly, the family, who have always used video cameras to document their lives, film themselves during the ensuing hysteria surrounding the allegations. The viewer is therefore privy to highly personal family arguments and video diaries.

As time passes the allegations against the accused become more and more outrageous, particularly as no physical evidence is ever found. The prosecution relies entirely on testimony from 'the victims' some of which is elicited only after they have undergone hypnosis.

The reaction of the community is predictably hysterical - rumour and death threats long before any real facts are known. NB: If you think this could only happen in America, remember the News of the World 'outing' of sex offenders some of which were no longer at the addresses published and the resultant violence against innocent people?

Perhaps the most clever aspect to the film is that just when the viewer thinks they have made up their mind as to the innocence or guilt of the accused, something else is revealed which questions your judgment.

Modern day interviews with the family, the victims and the police further adds to the confusion.

Without giving too much away I will only say that this is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen with the genuine family footage making it all the more compelling.

The DVD extras are also exrtemely worhwhile, especially the heated debate between the 'cast' in the theatre where they have just watched the premiere of the film. There are also updates on the family and developments since the film was released cinematically.

Trust no-one.

To say this movie is 'thought-provoking' is perhaps putting it a bit lightly. "Capturing The Friedmans" should go down as one of the bravest and most honest films about the crime of paedophilia ever made: it makes no judgements, it takes no sides, it refuses to draw conclusions beyond the evidence (much of which is confusing, contradictory, and probably unreliable - from all sides).

It's easy in child-abuse cases to treat the accused as either monstrous perpetrator or misunderstood victim, but this film refuses to be drawn into either simplistic trap. Instead it shows, piecemeal, how testimony and evidence do not actually produce cut-and-dried cases, how the further into a story you go the more unclear it becomes, and how those with something to say are not always coming from unbiased standpoints.

This is less a film about child abuse than about the processes, hype and accusation-counter-accusation that accompany allegations of this sort. Somewhere in the middle of this disturbing story, there may well be victims who deserved better than the protagonists allowed them.

This film will leave a lasting impression on you, for a long time to come.