The plight of the “West Memphis Three,” a trio of then-teenagers railroaded by the courts and public opinion and ultimately convicted of the murders of three 8-year old boys in Arkansas in 1993, has been well-documented previously in HBO’s Paradise Lost series. However, a stunning series of new developments in the case over the last few years inspired director Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil) to pick up the torch, resulting in West of Memphis (now playing nationwide courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics). Berg and the film received major backing from Lord of the Rings and Hobbit producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh as well as from rocker Eddie Vedder, who had all become convinced of the now-adult prisoners’ innocence.
Horribly killed and possibly abused sexually in the process,
news of the boys’ murders rightly shocked locals and much of the US when
originally reported. Though two of the boys’ parents were early
suspects, suspicion quickly settled on three young men in the community who
better fit their neighbors’ stereotypical image of would-be killers.
Damien Wayne Echols, Jessie Miskelley and Jason Baldwin were social misfits who
kept to themselves, wore dark clothing and listened to heavy metal music.
Rumors swirled that satanic worship, animal abuse and homosexual relations
(horrors!) were practiced among the three. The court of public opinion
found them guilty long before a jury did so, even though the start of the
teenagers’ trial was rushed in comparison with similar cases.
Lorri Davis, initially Echols’ pen pal and now his
wife, became convinced that the three had not committed the murders. As Davis pushed for a new
investigation with the benefit of now-routine DNA testing of evidence, she also
began an e-mail correspondence with producer Walsh that led to documentation of
her and others’ renewed efforts to exonerate Echols, Miskelley and
Baldwin. The three were finally freed in 2012 by pleading “innocent
but guilty” via an Arkansas
legal quirk rather than the state go through an expensive new trial.
The first third of West
of Memphis is largely comprised of a recounting of the crime and
trial that will seem overly-familiar to those who have seen any of the Paradise Lost films. However, the
remainder of the new documentary contains shocking new revelations, among them
the results of DNA testing of a strand of hair found in the rope with which one
of the victims was tied that virtually proves Terry Hobbs, stepfather at the
time to one of the boys, was the killer (no DNA linking those convicted to the
murders has been found). Hobbs
has yet to be arrested, let alone tried. Several witnesses in the trial
against the West Memphis Three have since recanted their testimony and explain
why they did so in West of Memphis.
As one of Echols’ accusers now says in reversing his damning words on the
stand and, it should be pointed out, under oath: “He was just a normal
kid.”
Berg’s doc is gripping, often infuriating, but in the
end hopeful about the ability of the truth and innocence to prevail thanks to
the efforts of those who strive against all obstacles to uphold them. Of
his interest in the case, producer Jackson
bluntly states, “I have a pathological hatred of bullying; rights must
prevail.” Kudos to him. What that all multimillionaire
filmmakers shared Jackson’s
commitment to social justice. West of
Memphis is frequently horrific and heartbreaking but an excellent,
engrossing expose. How did this not get an Oscar nomination for Best
Documentary this year?
Paradise found and
lost is a central theme in the otherwise completely different Tabu, a new feature by Portuguese
writer-director (and former film critic) Miguel Gomes. From Adopt Films,
it opens today at Laemmle’s Royal in West LA and Playhouse
7 in Pasadena
before expanding this spring. The movie is even divided into two parts
entitled “A Lost Paradise” and “Paradise.”
In part one, a recent retiree and devout Catholic, Pilar
(Teresa Madruga), obsesses over the health and loneliness of her elderly
neighbor, Aurora (veteran Portuguese actress Laura Soveral), in post-Christmas Lisbon, 2010. Aurora, meanwhile, is
concerned about her distant daughter and Santa, her possibly voodoo-practicing
maid (played by Isabel Cardoso). When Aurora
becomes hospitalized on the verge of death, Pilar is dispatched by Santa to retrieve
a mysterious elderly man named Ventura from a nursing
home so Aurora
can see him one last time before she dies.
En route (and during the film’s dialogue-free part
two), Ventura relates to Pilar the secret love
story shared between him and Aurora fifty years earlier in colonial Africa. Young Ventura and the married Aurora meet and
eventually begin a heated affair. Carlota Cotta (as Ventura,
looking like a 1950’s Brando) and Ana Moreira (as younger Aurora) are lovely and
give affecting performances all the more impressive for their silence. Also
worth noting, for gay viewers, is the homoerotic vibe between Ventura and his best friend, Mario (Manuel
Mesquita).
For a decades-spanning, country-hopping romance on a low
budget, Tabu looks great.
Shot in black & white by Rui Pocas (with help from artistic consultant
Silke Fischer), it intentionally evokes in aesthetics, settings and/or plot
elements such cinematic classics as Casablanca, The Postman Always Rings Twice, A Streetcar Named Desire
and even the original King Kong.
The script includes more direct references to The
Snows of Kilimanjaro, Out of Africa (including the line “Aurora
had a farm in Africa…”), Jean Renoir’s The River and possibly even the 1999 giant
crocodile-Betty White mash-up Lake Placid (Aurora
has a certain pet on said farm). Only an avowed, lifelong movie fan such
as the 40-year old Gomes could possibly incorporate such diverse sources of
inspiration.
The performances sometimes seem stiff among the women in
part one but this may be melodramatically intentional à la acting styles of the
1940’s-50’s. Gomes remarks in the press notes for Tabu that his latest work is “about
the passage of time, about things that disappear and can only exist as memory,
phantasmagoria, imagery — or as cinema, which summons and congregates all
that.” Even if Gomes doesn’t succeed 100% at capturing or
conveying this, the talented young filmmaker gets credit for trying.
Reverend’s Ratings:
West of Memphis: A-
Tabu: B
Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.
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