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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2003)
|uly IB. 2003 ’ a»* 37 FILM he popular PBS radio show This American Life recently rehroadcast one of its most riveting episodes about three young men who received long-term prison sentences for a murder they didn’t commit. Ending the show was a discussion of how law enforcement manipulates confessions. Host Ira Glass then ran a particularly poignant recorded examination of a 14-year-old boy who police convinced had killed his little sister— even though he hadn’t. The entire program called into question a system hell-bent on finding perpetrators fast and how the outside world inadequately per ceives confessions and investigations. New York director Andrew Jarecki has final ly equaled on film the depth and breadth of this astonishing social phenomenon in Capturing the Friedmans, now playing at Regal Pioneer Place Stadium. His subjects are the Arnold and Elaine Fried man family of Long Island, N.Y., whose 1987 Thanksgiving dinner was interrupted by police who arrested both Arnold and his 18-year-old son, Jesse, for child molestation. So begins a story that challenges even the most patient viewer with a barrage of conflict ing information, community assumptions and acute family dysfunction that provides, accord ing to Jarecki, “no objective truth.’’ The filmmaker originally set out to do a documentary on party clowns; David, the old est Friedman son, happens to be New York’s most celebrated. But it was David’s family Jarecki began to find irresistible. He also found the Friedmans’ home movies irresistible. Well before video cameras were the norm, the family “documented itself incessant ly,” right up through the arrests and trials. “While most families.. .document special happy T Family matters L H mold Friedman’s brother, Howard, agrees U that Capturing the Friedmans is a “brilliant ■ ■film.” Still, the Portland-area resident wishes “it hadn’t been made.** Howard, who lived with his partner, Jack, on the Oregon coast for several years before moving to Milwaukie last December, is featured in the new documentary exploring the strange Long Island case of Arnold and Jesse Fried man’s arrests for child sexual abuse in 1987. The articulate, soft-spoken man explains that, rather than bringing people who clearly had tenuous relationships to begin with closer together through exposing possible injustice, the film has “tom asunder” the family. “My oldest nephew, David, and my middle nephew, No objective truth Capturing the Friedmans proves truth is stranger—and more elusive—than fiction by L isa B radshaw celebrations like birthdays, this family never turned the camera off.. .starting with 8 mm films shot three generations ago,” says Jarecki. This footage, mixed with the director’s own, provides a view into the home through two alternatively fascinating windows. rnold Friedman received child pornogra phy through the mail, a federal offense. Jesse and Arnold Friedman under arrest in 1987 The police also find that the respected and surfacing evidence of Arnold’s prior offens high school teacher is giving computer and es, the audience goes back and forth in believ piano lessons to boys in his home, assisted by ing who is guilty of what. his youngest son. They begin questioning the Queer viewers will take special note of some students, using methods including hypnosis, specifics of what was allegedly happening to largely believed to conjure up those dreaded children in the Friedman home under the “false memories." noses of the rest of the family. Some of the Amid echoes of This American Life, a detective claims are not physically possible, and the interviewed in Capturing the Friedmans chillingly accusations themselves smack of not just hyste states: “Children want to please very often. They ria but homophobia. want to give you the answers that you want.” Just below the surface of Capturing the Fried- It goes from bad to worse for the family, par mans lies a sense of what could be happening ticularly young Jesse, who claims innocence to a man whose homosexuality has undergone but becomes confused about his own memories. a lifetime of severe repression. Around the ref Or does he? Between the lies the Friedmans are erences of a non-existent sex life with his wife encouraged to (or believe they should) tell, and a former student’s description of Arnold as their vastly differing takes on the same stories A “being kind of a nebbish” creeps in the notion that from suppression and confusion eventually enipts unhealthy, dangerous behaviors. Obviously, this is dangerous territory. But this film introduces more questions than it answers—intelligently, carefully and without talxxi. Queer sexuality is one of the many sub tle whispers floating through this amazing study of an American family in extreme crisis. “What I would like to see happen,” says Jarecki, “is that people leave and say: ‘You know, I’ve seen a lot of films this year where, at the end, I’m supposed to think something, and here, I’m not supposed to think some thing. I’m just supposed to think.’ That’s my hope." jn Oregonian. Howard Friedman on his family and the truth where he isn’t sure Jesse is telling even him die truth and thinks “the truth lies somewhere in between what die children said and what my brother and Jesse did.. .1 don’t know for sure.” Howard identifies as gay, but he does not Seth.. .have nothing to do with their mother. consider his brother to have struggled with They will not see her, they will not call her,” that identity. “Most pedophiles are not (gayl,” Seth refused to be interviewed for the film he states. “I don’t believe he was gay.” and is angry at the rest of the family for par It’s jarring to have your family’s “dirty linen ticipating. “But we all realized,” says Howard, up on the line,” Howard notes. “That picture “that this director was going to make the film they use in the ad...1 took that picture; it was regardless...we could be interviewed and my nephew’s bar mitzvah. I took that picture!” have some say in the film or just tell him to The entire difficult public process, though, has go jump in the lake, and he'd still make it" Milwaukie resident Howard Friedman in been made bearable by his partner’s support. Howard opted for the former, noting that Capturing the Friedmans “I could not have made it through all of this he wanted “some positive things" about his without Jack. 1 could not have.... If you’re lucky admits. “This thing is knocking on the door, brother to be known and said in the movie. enough to share your life with someone...tell and the door’s opening.” One of those was Howard firmly denying him you love him, hug him, go out and buy him Talking with Howard doesn’t necessarily clear i any memory that his older brother abused him up questions the movie ultimately raises about some Krispy Kremes. That’s what I have to say.” as a child, contrary to Arnold’s own claim. —LB guilt, innocence or truth. 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