Saturday Night At The Movies
Double Feature: All in the family
By Dennis Hartley
I smell ‘Oscar’: Swank and Rockwell in Conviction
In May of 1980, the body of a woman named Katherina Brow was discovered in her Ayers, Massachusetts home by her daughter-in-law. Brow had been brutally murdered (she had 30 stab wounds) and police found what they believed to be the murder weapon, a bloody paring knife, still on the premises. Brow’s purse and a few other valuables were missing, so the motive appeared to be robbery. Based largely on circumstantial evidence, one of Brow’s neighbors, Kenny Waters, became an immediate suspect; police retained him for questioning the day after the murder, but he was released after providing a verifiable alibi. Several months later, he voluntarily submitted to a voice stress test, which he passed. The case remained opened until the fall of 1982, when the then-current boyfriend of one of Waters’ ex-girlfriends approached investigators, claiming to have incriminating information about Waters, which he would divulge in exchange for money (it has never been confirmed whether he was paid). After receiving corroboration from the ex-girlfriend (which she later would claim to have agreed to give only because police allegedly threatened to charge her as an accessory and take away her children if she did not back up her boyfriend’s story), Waters was officially charged with Brow’s murder. After a relatively short trial, Waters was convicted and sentenced to life in May of 1983.
So far, you’re probably thinking that this sounds like a thousand other murder cases you’ve heard about. Someone was killed, someone was now paying for it; I think I’ve seen this narrative played out once or twice on TV, in one of those sordid “true-crime” re-creations hosted by that silver-haired ghoul who they love to satirize on SNL, ho-hum. However, what ensued during the 18 years between May 1983, when Waters began to serve his sentence, and March of 2001, when he was released from prison and officially exonerated of the crime, is the stuff that a movie producer’s wet dreams are made of.
Because, you see, Mr. Waters had a sister named Betty Anne-a very loving and devoted sister. How devoted? During the 18-year period that Kenny languished in prison, she basically put the rest of her life on hold (at the cost of her marriage and relationship with her two sons) to devote heart and soul to one solitary goal: getting her brother cleared of a crime that she was 100% convinced he had not committed. In order to achieve this goal, she first needed to literally become a lawyer, so she put herself through college and law school, and then got to work. This amazing story of a woman taking on “the system” and winning (yay!), almost purely through the sheer power of her conviction has been turned into an inspirational, Erin Brockovich
Director Tony Goldwyn has reunited with screenwriter Pamela Gray for this film (they previously teamed up in 1999 on the underrated sleeper, A Walk on the Moon
Flashbacks to Betty Anne and Kenny’s childhood suggest that their close bond was deeply rooted. This mutual protectiveness could have been necessitated by pure survival instinct; as they spent most of their early years in foster care. It is also clear that Kenny, while possessed of a rambunctiously fun-loving spirit, also had, from a very young age, a propensity for letting it get him into trouble. There are certain people (and I think we’ve all known personalities like this at some point in our lives) who seem like they were born to piss off authority figures, even when they’re not consciously trying to. Kenny was one of those people; suffice it to say he grew up on a first name basis with all the local cops.
Interestingly (at least as depicted in the film) Kenny’s reaction to his arrest and incarceration on the murder charge leans toward a resigned ambivalence throughout the ordeal; it is his sister who, from day one, makes the impassioned case for exoneration. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision by the filmmakers (perhaps for the sake of adding some dramatic tension) to leave the door ajar to the possibility that his sister could have been blinded by love…or if Kenny, like a character from a Kafka novel, had decided to make peace with the rain of bad karma with a shrug of existential indifference. Or-it could be lazy screenwriting-but I’d have to see the film again to really confirm that.
One wise decision by the filmmakers (IMHO) was to end the film on an emotional high note, with Kenny’s release from prison; because the real life coda was, putting it mildly, fraught with karmic cruelty. Six months after his release and official exoneration, Kenny Waters died from a fall in a freak accident (or this could have been cosmic justice-who can really say for sure?). The film also calls attention to the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization dedicated to proving wrongly convicted persons innocent through DNA testing (one of the group’s co-founders, Barry Scheck, played a pivotal role in assisting Betty Anne with her case and is well-played in the film by Peter Gallagher).
Swank and Rockwell are ably supported here with noteworthy performances from Minnie Driver (who I feel should get a Best Supporting nomination), Juliette Lewis, Clea DuVall and the always excellent Melissa Leo (cast against type as a corrupt cop). This is definitely an actor’s movie; which makes sense because director Goldwyn has a long list of acting credits in his resume. At the end of the day, although Betty Anne Waters is undeniably a kind of “superwoman” (and my newest hero) this film is not so much about truth, justice and the American way as it is about real love, dedication and selflessness.
I didn’t do it: The Wrong Man
Previous posts with related themes: William Kuntsler: Disturbing the Universe
Part II
Misty mountain hop: Last Train Home
Speaking of family melodramas, one of the best I have seen this year is not fictional, nor even “based” on a true story; but rather an absorbing, beautifully photographed documentary by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan called Last Train Home. The family in the spotlight is the Zhangs: Changhua (dad), Suqin (mom), their 17 year old daughter Qin, and their young son. Changhua and Suqin are two of the 130 million migrant workers who crowd China’s train depots and bus stations every spring in a mass, lemming-like frenzy to get back to their rural villages in time for New Year’s holiday. And like many of those millions of workers, these are the few precious days they have every year to see their children, who, due to the fact that their parents do not have urban residency status, do not qualify to attend the public schools in the cities where they work.
Changhua and Suqin toil away their days in the city of Guangzhou, working in a factory. Early on in the film, a wordless sequence, wherein we watch the couple performing their evening ablutions before turning in for the night, speaks volumes about the joyless drudgery and quiet desperation of their daily life. They appear to be bunking in a closet-sized cubicle (with only a curtain for privacy) contained within some kind of communal flophouse (possibly adjacent to, or perhaps even part of, their factory building-which is an even more depressing thought). At any rate, one colorless day blends into the next.
The only break in the monotony comes when the New Year arrives, and the couple is followed as they attempt to make their way home in time-and I have to say, this is as far from a madcap romp starring Steve Martin and John Candy that you can possibly get. After several frustrating setbacks, they eventually find a place on a train (at thrice the usual rates). The scenes at the train stations are surreal and harrowing; the press of so much humanity, all crammed into one finite space, and all of one mind (to claim a seat and stash their luggage no matter who gets injured) is mind boggling. Happy New Year.
The real drama, however, unfolds once the bedraggled parents reach their destination. They are greeted by a young son who is much more excited about the toys they have brought than he is in seeing them again (it’s been three years since he’s seen his mother) and a sullen, hostile Qin, who resents their prolonged absences. The children are much closer to their grandmother, who has been taking care of them while Changhua and Suqin work in the city. When Qin announces that she has decided to quit school and follow in her parents footsteps by finding a job in the city, the shit hits the fan (like parents anywhere else in the world, they live in hope that their kids will achieve more than them).
The director was given a amazing degree of latitude by the family in filming their lives; to the point of feeling almost too close for comfort at times (especially during an intense family row that gets physical). As difficult as some of it is to watch, however, the end result is an engrossing portrait of what happens in a country like China, which has seen so much rapid industrialization and exponential economic growth in such a relatively short period of time that the infrastructure and social policies have fallen light years behind. And the saddest (and most ironic) part is that the millions of working poor like the Zhangs, who made the country’s new prosperity possible, are in no position to benefit from it. Hold on a minute. Maybe we have more in common with China than I thought…
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