It’s disconcerting to be appalled and even slightly nauseated by a masterpiece. But Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans is a documentary, and so it’s disconcerting largely because of its subject matter—it shocks us with the truth.
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I can at least say that Friedman, who privately owned up to pedophiliac urges but initially pleaded not guilty to any assaults, wound up going to prison for the remainder of his life; that his wife divorced him, while his three sons continued to defend him; and that his youngest son, Jesse, who helped his father give computer lessons, went to prison at age 19 for sexual assault (he too initially pleaded not guilty) and served 13 years. The film’s final scene shows his mother, Elaine, who has since remarried and moved, greeting him at her door for the first time after his release.
We may ask why she allowed Jarecki to record such an intimate moment, but by this point he’s already shown so many other, no less private family scenes that the question seems moot. A far more important issue is our readiness to be entertained by such events as if they were part of a Hollywood movie—which Jarecki capitalizes on and which most of the Friedmans, who seem compelled to record their lives on film and video, encourage. Still, we come away with several unanswered or half-answered questions, which is entirely to the film’s credit—especially because the apparently peripheral issue of how and why so much of this story took place in front of cameras winds up seeming like the central one. For even though we’re often persuaded to take these home movies and videos as neutral pieces of evidence, the Friedmans’ (and our) implicit trust in cameras inflects their behavior as well as the way we respond to it. The very first thing we see in the film is Jesse jokily introducing Arnold much as a TV interviewer would.
Even the decision of Seth Friedman, the middle son, not to be interviewed for the film takes on a certain suggestive meaning—though that meaning, whatever it is, is deliberately minimized because Jarecki doesn’t tell us Seth refused to be interviewed until shortly before the movie ends. At another exceptional moment Elaine, in the midst of an ugly family argument, says to her oldest son, David, “Please don’t film me.” We may feel a sudden rush of sympathy for her and her uncharacteristic request for privacy—even as we recognize that her oft expressed feelings of exclusion from the male family circle are connected to her lack of interest in performing for the camera.
At one point we’re told that Arnold’s last-minute decision to plead guilty to more than 40 assault charges was made in an empty jury room while he was quarreling with his family, and we’re shown an empty jury room and simultaneously hear sounds of quarreling. We’re evidently being asked to accept what we hear as the actual quarrel that occurred in that room, but what if what we’re hearing is a quarrel that was recorded at another time? Does that make any ethical difference, especially given that the words aren’t very distinct? Maybe not, but if it’s trickery it’s troubling—particularly because the sex-crimes detectives did something similar when gathering some of their evidence, dropping suggestions about what might have happened, then asking others to fill in the blanks.
Directed by Andrew Jarecki.
