Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar, 2023)

Lockup drama

Small confession: meant to trudge my way to the movie theater to watch the latest  Alien movie because-- why, exactly? Liked the atmosphere and production design and cast of the first movie; liked the offbeat humor and imagery of the fourth (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, from a script by Joss Whedon)-- otherwise, not a big fan.  

So I went and saw Greg Kwedar's Sing Sing instead.

Didn't pick totally blind; knew the film was about a theater group (Rehabilitation Through the Arts, or RTA) in the infamous New York prison, combined actors with some of the actual people involved, and was shot on location (which on the surface looks like a ballsy move).

Actually not entirely on location-- establishing and exterior shots feature the actual prison, but most of it was shot in a decommissioned facility in the Hudson Valley, a more feasible (and likely safer) proposition. 

And the film was good. Felt and looked raw, though for a while, Kwedar's tendency to use shaky cam to capture the convicts' faces in gigantic closeups was off-putting-- you want to yell at the camera to pull back, give the performances room to breathe, capture their body language, modulate their already intense emotions by fixing them agains the rusted bars and cold stony walls. This was the low-budget equivalent of Tom Hooper's movie adaptation of Les Miserables (Do I hear the people sing? Yes I do, now back off) with huge faces and bigger voices yelling at you from the screen. 

Maybe a less visible but graver flaw can be found in the end credits: "filmed with the cooperation of the New York State Department of Corrections." You sense this early on-- the lack of abusive guards, actually the almost complete lack of presence of prison staff; the somewhat vanilla presentation of prison life (no visible drug use, or gang activity, or sex consensual or otherwise). If anything, the administration is felt more for its cold indifference than anything actively malevolent-- apparently the filmmakers made a deal with the devil to realize their project.

Not familiar with the film's production history, but I can guess they had little choice, if they were to use Sing Sing's exteriors, or shoot in a decommissioned facility, or have the cooperation of so many of the group's members; if true, the members' tacit endorsement or approval of correctional's involvement is enough for me. This is not yet another lurid melodrama about prison rape and guard abuse and riots on the cellblock, done in so many other films, some of them done well (off the top of my head: Brute Force, Runaway Train, In the Name of the Father, Hunger, Escape from Alcatraz, A Prophet, Bulaklak sa City Jail). Sing Sing tells of a different population, of convicts that have already decided to change and taken a solid and visible step to do so-- including ever more violent examples of the same prison cliches would only detract from the narrative. 

And the narrative does pull you along, once it gets going: mainly the tentative friendship that sprouts between John 'Divine G' Whitfield (Colman Domingo) and the skittish Clarence 'Divine Eye' Maclin (played by Maclin himself). Kwedar shoots his scenes (especially later on) in loose long takes, and we come to get a feel for the characters' idiosyncrasies and the unique prison lingo, with the novel addition of the language of theater groups (liberal doses of Shakespeare, particularly passages from Hamlet, talks of emotions and the art of acting, plus varied workshop exercises that remind you of one strand of Rivette's Out 1). Kwedar even develops a little suspense: will Maclin's macho pride force him to drop out of the theater group? Will Whitfield get the parole he's worked so hard for? Will the play they're staging-- Breakin the Mummy's Code-- find the funding and raise its curtains to the prison audience?

Prison life plus theater group-- it's a fresh combination. I've heard of prison theater before, in TV and radio documentaries, but this is the rare feature film that focuses on such a group, if not the actual first of its kind. Cinematographer Pat Scola shoots in 16 mm and the warm skin tones and melancholy color palette is a welcome change from the digitally massaged look of so many films nowadays-- Breakin is staged and shot like a high school production with a real budget and professional lighting and costume design (footage of the original production can be seen on grainy video); a sequence late in the film, of a convict packing up and eventual departing, is done with an understated depth of feeling that's unspeakably beautiful (wish the rest of the film were on that visual level). The convicts-- Jon-Adrian 'JJ' Velazquez's domed head and wary eyes; Sean 'Dino' Johnson with his gentle moon face; Maclin himself, all shadowed cheeks and shadowy eyes-- call them figures of truth, because they lack the art or skill to present themselves otherwise, lack the art or skill to present this material otherwise. They are themselves, and this is their story.