Documentary review

Documentary response to Capturing the Friedmans

Capturing the Friedmans is a compelling documentary about how the lives of a respected high school teacher Arnold Friedman and his family who live in Great Neck, Long Island, are completely turned over after he is arrested on charges of child molestation. As the Friedman family starts to deal with the present situation they dealt another blow with one further arrest one of the sons, 18 year-old Jessie. This discussion will address a few major points including the production process, the way in which the narrative is told as well as how ethics play a role in the process.
Firstly the viewer is presented with the oldest son David’s account of the situation. He had bought himself a video camera prior to the unfolding family dilemma. So when the issue came to light David decided that he would videotape all the emotions, the actions and their responses to the news. One of the fist scenes is that of the family at a beach holiday, where everyone is seemingly happy and unperturbed by anything or anyone. There is a sudden change in the mood where the actual footage of where Arnold stored his child pornography was found. He was subsequently arrested and taken into custody. This is where the viewers are introduced to his estranges wife, Elaine. In terms of the cinematography director Andrew Jarecki in my opinion situates the characters in places that are symbolic of their personalities. I would therefore suggest that David is located in a busy, untidy and completely unstructured life. His mother, who tends to be rather bland and mundane is located in very much the same setting that one would expect to her to be in. In a literal sense she seems to be very isolated and excluded from her family, who is the only one who tends to think logically and has the ability to rationalise her thoughts. She therefore believes that Arnold is guilty and is as a result ignored by her sons, who believe in their father and brother’s innocence.
The viewer is introduced to this idea of ethical choices right from the beginning. In my own opinion when I first saw the family I believed that there was something not quite right. But then when the old-looking Arnold is shown to the viewers I found it difficult to believe that he could be involved in such allegations. His wife never directly defends him on camera, so that in itself is something to question, but then when Jessie’s best friend is interviewed as well as Arnold’s brother one begins to question the allegations based purely on their own accounts of the two. In order to prove or disprove the allegations witnesses or in this case victims needed to be found, especially because of the lack of evidence to prove their involvement with sexual molestation. A few of the students who attended the computer classes in the family’s basement were interviewed. In terms of one the victims, setting in appearance came across as somewhat slimly, classless and quite frankly in my opinion unreliable as a source. The person wanted to remain anonymous, but he was lying down while doing the interview, which immediately is unprofessional in my opinion especially after such an ordeal that he has supposedly gone though. With this in mind one of the other former students who was interviewed was well presented and groomed, respectable and thus reliable seemed to think that this was completely ridiculous. Now as a viewer I started thinking about what this was about whom to believe. I then distanced myself from that thought and instead thought about this as a media practioner, to which I concluded that there were several clear ideological meanings that were being created and that the director was in actual fact aiming for the process of questioning the truth. For example a respected family from the outside, was deteriorating at such a pace, and that they had actually become so blinded by the truth that they seemed to lose all sense of rationality.
The sons are extremely rude to their mother and treat her like some kind of non-entity. In addition to this I found them to be very sexual too, especially in the way that David discusses how is mother is “sexually ignorant”. This may seem to be a sweeping statement but I believe that these men are themselves sexually ignorant, and are blinded to the lies that their father has subjected them too. It is at this stage that we are again presented with the idea of why the students never complained or spoke of these allegations. After all these students continued to go back to the classes. Once again viewers are confronted with the idea that they potentially innocent. Arnold in the end confessed to having two sexual relations with boys his age but at a young age, and also confessed to being a pedophile, in which he claimed he did to keep Jessie out of jail. Jessie later confessed to having sexual relations too, and therefore went to jail.
I think what is effective in this documentary is the way in which the director is objective in revealing both sides of the story. I think indirectly he too believed that they were guilty and he let their own collection of home videos prove to the audience that they in fact were blinded by the truth, possibly because they too were being abused? Those are questions that I as a viewer was left with, and therefore I think that the producer and director was good at doing this. He achieved what I consider to be one the most fundamental issues of documentary making, making the viewer think, discuss and question the contents that he or she has just consumed.

The viewer is introduced to this idea of ethical choices right from the beginning. In my own opinion when I first saw the family I believed that there was something not quite right. But then when the old-looking Arnold is shown to the viewers I found it difficult to believe that he could be involved in such allegations. His wife never directly defends him on camera, so that in itself is something to question, but then when Jessie’s best friend is interviewed as well as Arnold’s brother one begins to question the allegations based purely on their own accounts of the two. In order to prove or disprove the allegations witnesses or in this case victims needed to be found, especially because of the lack of evidence to prove their involvement with sexual molestation. A few of the students who attended the computer classes in the family’s basement were interviewed. In terms of one the victims, setting in appearance came across as somewhat slimly, classless and quite frankly in my opinion unreliable as a source. The person wanted to remain anonymous, but he was lying down while doing the interview, which immediately is unprofessional in my opinion especially after such an ordeal that he has supposedly gone though. With this in mind one of the other former students who was interviewed was well presented and groomed, respectable and thus reliable seemed to think that this was completely ridiculous. Now as a viewer I started thinking about what this was about whom to believe. I then distanced myself from that thought and instead thought about this as a media practioner, to which I concluded that there were several clear ideological meanings that were being created and that the director was in actual fact aiming for the process of questioning the truth. For example a respected family from the outside, was deteriorating at such a pace, and that they had actually become so blinded by the truth that they seemed to lose all sense of rationality.
The sons are extremely rude to their mother and treat her like some kind of non-entity. In addition to this I found them to be very sexual too, especially in the way that David discusses how is mother is “sexually ignorant”. This may seem to be a sweeping statement but I believe that these men are themselves sexually ignorant, and are blinded to the lies that their father has subjected them too. It is at this stage that we are again presented with the idea of why the students never complained or spoke of these allegations. After all these students continued to go back to the classes. Once again viewers are confronted with the idea that they potentially innocent. Arnold in the end confessed to having two sexual relations with boys his age but at a young age, and also confessed to being a pedophile, in which he claimed he did to keep Jessie out of jail. Jessie later confessed to having sexual relations too, and therefore went to jail.
I think what is effective in this documentary is the way in which the director is objective in revealing both sides of the story. I think indirectly he too believed that they were guilty and he let their own collection of home videos prove to the audience that they in fact were blinded by the truth, possibly because they too were being abused? Those are questions that I as a viewer was left with, and therefore I think that the producer and director was good at doing this. He achieved what I consider to be one the most fundamental issues of documentary making, making the viewer think, discuss and question the contents that he or she has just consumed.