Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

Capturing the Friedmans is a documentary for our time. An investigation into the prosecution for child molestation of father and son Arnold and Jesse Friedman, its focus more properly seems to be ambiguity. Doubt is cast on the prosecution's evidence, particularly the unreliability of the evidence presented by the children and their families in a time of public hysteria. But the defendants are scarcely believable either. When two interviewees flatly contradict one another, who do you believe?

The film also features many sequences of home video filmed by Jesse's brother, David, and functions as a kind of meta-commentary on the way we record the present and remember the past, especially as time passes and memory fades.

It's an interesting experience. Documentaries often have an activist bent, and documentaries about criminal cases often seem to aim, like Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line, to rectify an injustice such as a false conviction. I have little doubt that Capturing the Friedmans has the same aim. The director, Andrew Jarecki, has publicly stated his belief in Jesse's innocence. But even as a self-contained artefact it seems incredible, seeming to point out holes in the prosecution's case that you could drive a truck through, such as the lack of physical evidence (of any sort) or long lists of offenses, which, it is suggested, could not possibly be carried out in the narrow timeframe allowed. Of course it turns out that there are reasonable explanations, and that neither the prosecutors, police, nor the judge, were idiots.

Maybe I ask too much. But unless the film was meant as a meta-meta-commentary -- a biased recollection to illustrate the biases of recollection -- it reads like a propaganda piece masquerading as "fair and balanced".