Gregory Porter Capturing the Friedmans is about the Friedmans; an upper-middle class Jewish family in upstate New York. One day, the police come to the home of the Friedmans and search for child pornography. The police uncover a number of magazines belonging to Arnold Friedman. A retired high school teacher, he, with the help of his son Jesse, hold computer classes and piano lessons for young children. Once the police realize this, they start investigating Arnold for child abuse. Before long, he and his son are charged with around a hundred counts of sexual assault.I have a lot of fun watching documentaries; I can spend roughly two hours watching a movie on the grounds that I am learning something. Over time I've come to realize that it isn't just what the documentary is saying but how. Sometimes documentaries are clearly biased.If you are a fan of documentaries, there is a website called Documentary Heaven which has lots of documentaries you can watch for free. I remember one that was about secret government cloud seeding experiments. Cloud seeding is, more or less, controlling rainfall and weather patterns. For that documentary, there was just the director, one person that was interviewed, and only about a dozen pictures that faded in and out of the frame. Towards the end of the hour and forty-five minute snoozefest, the director comes out from behind the camera and shouts to the camera, "If he has had so much success cloud seeding, why isn't the government spending millions doing further testing!?" It detracts from the feeling that you are learning something. Instead it feels like you are spending time hearing propaganda.The only other documentary I've seen more than once was Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005) and that was because I saw it for a film class. I watched it once at home and once in the class. I don't usually watch documentaries more than once because, well, hearing it once is usually enough. It's like attending a lecture more than once. You don't unless you have to. I saw Capturing the Friedmans twice so far because, again, I saw it for a class. But I will, however, most certainly be seeing it again. Capturing the Friedmans is an example of amazing storytelling.The plot thickens at every turn. With documentaries about crimes, I read them like a detective novel. You decipher the film maker's bias and then anticipate the details of the crime to make up your mind. In this case, whenever I solved the mystery, if you will, the movie would cut to another interview that threw me off.Jarecki juxtaposes interviews to create fascinating dialogs. For example, we hear from the District Attorney about the process for conducting interviews with children. He explains that the children may be frightened so one doesn't want to put words in their mouths. Instead of saying "we know he assaulted you," one should say, "what happened next?" The movie then cuts over to one of the detectives who conducted many of the interviews for the Friedman case: "We went through the whole line of questions...'We know you were in these computer classes and we know that there was a good chance he sexually assaulted you..." the camera then fades out. It's an example of how the movie can steer us toward reaching a particular conclusion. Better still, the movie can make us realize how we could never know the truth of the Friedman case. Towards the end of the movie, Jesse and his attorney provide radically different accounts of the same event. Who can we trust?A major source of information comes from the Friedman's home movies. The family shot a lot of home movies particularly around the time of the investigations. The footage provides a great balance to the interviews. Some shots from their ordinary cameras are eerily good too which add to the experience. At one point, Arnold is playing the piano and his son moves in for a close up. We listen to upbeat music (though it is made darker given the circumstance) and watch his glasses which reflect his hands on the piano keys.I highly recommend you see Capturing the Friedmans. The subject matter is solidly depressing but it is a really well done documentary.

tomgillespie2002 Documentary film-makers are required to be somewhat voyeuristic in their attempts to capture the truth, but when first time film-maker Andrew Jarecki was working on a documentary on New York's number one clown 'Silly Billy' David Friedman, he stumbled upon a shocking story, and found that most of his work had already been done for him. Not to say that Capturing the Friedmans isn't a well-structured and well-made film - it certainly is - but what Jarecki stumbled upon was something so intimate that even the very best of film-makers could not have captured footage so startling and devastating.The footage I'm referring to is the wealth of home footage captured by David Friedman, his brothers Seth and Jesse, and his father Arnold, before and during Arnold's trial for child molestation. What we witness is an apparently happy, picture-postcard middle-class Jewish family fall apart before our eyes, unravelling a history of tension, sadness and sexual frustration between Arnold and wife Elaine, and a dysfunction that inevitably rubbed off on the children. Aside from this, Capturing the Friedmans also documents the arrest, trial and incarceration of Arnold and youngest son Jesse, revealing possible police ineptitude and holes in the American Justice System.When a federal sting operation results in the arrest of Arnold Friedman following the delivery of child pornography, the respected teacher finds himself questioned further when police find out he taught computer classes at home to kids. Soon enough, children are appearing out of the woodwork making claims of sexual abuse and humiliation at the hands of Arnold and Jesse, and the story becomes a media frenzy. Jarecki unearths flaws in the investigations, even recording some of the former pupils denying that there was any abuse at all, as well as pointing at the obvious fact that there was no physical evidence or anything noticed by the parents at the time.The film doesn't offer any answers, nor does it attempt to as it's not the point of the film. It puts the viewer in the role of judge, jury and executioner, forcing you to ask yourself if this is really justice, and whether Jesse (Arnold's guilt of paedophilia is certain), as annoying as you may find him, really got what he deserved based on suspicion and child testimony alone. Capturing the Friedmans is many things - a condemnation of American justice, a devastating record of family dysfunction - but whatever you get out of it, it is an expertly pieced- together documentary, frustrating and shocking throughout, and telling a great story at the same time.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Kevin MacFarlane Well if you want to start a fight with your girlfriend. Watch this movie.This is actually a brilliantly told story,and really well don for featuring both sides of the story. The rest of this review could probably be int he philosophy section. Anyhoo.How can a documentary about a crime syndicate be two sided? Well the problem is, that is how we approach most documentaries about crime. Usually we already know that Ted Bundy and Charles Manson committed the crimes, and we are watching to find out how. So that is how this movie starts. An affluent US suburb on a peninsula of Long Island is rocked when customs officials, following the trail of some child pornography magazines, find the owner also teaches computer classes to young boys from his home. The officials go door knocking and all of a sudden the suburb is racked when a bunch of little kids start coming forth about the terrible abuse they suffered there. There are some interviews with people, family of the abuser, and victims too, but its hard to like any of them. Somethings not right. But you follow the scenes like any normal documentary. Then there are some inconsistencies. The police say there were piles of pornographic magazines everywhere - but photos THEY took don't show any. The only witnesses who testified about the abuse are pretty screwed up characters, but this is a situation that you would expect to leave any one screwed up. But it all starts to unravel as you get further into the case. The son of the abusing computer teacher is now brought into the case, some victims claim he is much worse.If this was happening in your neighborhood - wouldn't you do anything to make sure they both spent the rest of their lives in jail. But slowly, and cleverly,director Andrew Jarecki draws your attention to the gaps in the case. And its a tough sell. Child molesters need to go to jail, for protection of more kids, and to stop others from doing it. But what if the cops were so intent on the idea of child molestation rings, that they made sure they found it? What if there one hole in the case was that the son had been there, and would bear witness that the father had NOT done any of those things. So they made sure the son was implicated? Is that possible?The real crux of the matter is how the students were repeatedly and forcefully coerced into testifying. They started off not knowing anything about abuse, but the cops were intent on getting the information they expected from the kids, until some kids just broke down. Did little kids tell the cops what they wanted to hear to get respite? One witness admitted that he didn't remember anything until he was hypnotized, and to this day it is still so clear. But hypnotism has been shown to implant suggested memories as easily as uncover real ones. The real bone of contention here is now about how you feel about a potential child molester walking free, but about the perversion of the US justice system. And that's why this is so difficult to talk about. If you shout for the side of justice to be served, others see you (indeed the whole community at the time would view you) as a pervert protector... So you can imagine, naysayers keep their mouths shut, while angry parents and community members rally their hate, anger and coerce and bully and ensure the Friedmans go away for a long time.But is it right to punish anyone like that with falsified evidence just in case? If thats' true, couldn't it happen to you?The toughest part of this case was the fact that Friedman himself, confessed to like young boys, and having crossed the line with two young boys in another incident many years ago - but this does not mean that him or his son did these terrible things to those children - but its such a sensitive issue - no one will talk about it. Until this movie. I challenge you to watch this with loved ones, and come out agreeing on what actually happened and what should happen....

conwu1 Not sure if it is worse watching this movie or watching Nancy Grace on CNN. I am not sure if I have stomach for any more contents like this. I have no interest in giving my attention to a family that craves for attention in such a degree they videotape each other on a regular basis. Its like, "hey, look at me. I am on the camera." Why the family even want to air it's dirty laundry. Just disturbing. The filmmaker tries to create suspension by presenting contradicting of memories on incidences. I wonder how many interviews the filmmakers have to do before they can get the two interviews that are actually contradicting each other. What is the point in making this movie?