In the late 1980’s, the Friedmans – father and respected computer and music teacher Arnold Friedman, mother and housewife Elaine Friedman, and their three grown sons, David Friedman, Seth Friedman and Jesse Friedman – of Great Neck, Long Island, are seemingly your typical middle class American family. They all admit that the marriage was by no means close to being harmonious – Arnold and Elaine eventually got divorced – but the sons talk of their father, while also not being always there for them, as being a good man. This facade of respectability masks the fact that Arnold was buying and distributing child pornography. Following a sting operation to confirm this fact, the authorities began to investigate Arnold for sexual abuse of the minor-aged male students of his computer classes, which he held in the basement of the family home. –IMDb
Un des meilleurs documentaires que j'ai vu, qui laisse le jugement au spectateur. Troublant.
Essentially what a good documentary should be: The exploration of a film maker within the subject and build of narrative as he/she sees it. Jarecki clearly had a judgement on the case, and he makes this quite clear at times, however there's a brilliant ambiguity to the film that shows the 'chinese whisper' essence of human beings. I know if I watched it 10 times I'd have a new opinion each time. Absolutely brilliant.
Not since Dreyer’s Day of Wrath has such a rapturous, stark and openly, frankly Godless depiction of familial crisis, existential isolation, the boundaries between truth and Truth, and the slipperiness… read review
