Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and with over $3 million at the box office to date, Capturing The Friedmans is nothing short of the most riveting, provocative, and hotly debated films of the year. Despite their predilection for hamming it up in front of home-movie cameras, the Friedmans were a normal middle-class family living in the affluent New York suburb of Great Neck. One Thanksgiving, as the family gathers at home for a quiet holiday dinner, their front door explodes, splintered by a police battering ram. Officers rush into the house, accusing Arnold Friedman and his youngest son Jesse of hundreds of shocking crimes. The film follows their story from the public’s perspective and through unique real footage of the family in crisis, shot inside the Friedman house. As the police investigate, and the community reacts, the fabric of the family begins to disintegrate, revealing provocative questions about truth, justice, family, and -ultimately-truth. With an abundance of exclusive DVD bonus features supplied on a second disc, Capturing the Friedmans is sure to capture you and pin you to your seat.
There’s enough evidence here that this was just a dude that was completely fucked in the head but never did anything to anyone to deserve the prison time that he got. Or maybe he did do all those horrible things to all those kids and not even a single one of them told their parents and only remembers after hypnosis or an unsupervised interview with the police.
It’s an interesting documentary, but most of it is made up of home video from the family, so it has a low quality feel to it, and may only interest you if you remember the arrests.
