Capturing the Friedmans
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Arnold Friedman (II), David Friedman (IX), Elaine Friedman, Jesse Friedman (II), Seth Friedman (II)Brand: JARECKI,ANDREW
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-01-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 92278
Studio: HBO Video
Product features:
- 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 G
Movie Reviews of Capturing the Friedmans
Movie Review: 21st Century American Street Justice Captured on Film
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, as most have pointed out, you will probably not see something like this in your lifetime again. Here the Friedman family, during recreational video sessions, captured a horrible series of events that eventually led to one of the biggest child abuse scandals in American history. The documentary cuts between home footage moments, (some of which show the family falling apart at the seams and in particular turning on their mother in many of such family clashes) and recent interviews with the cast, including the cops, lawyers and some of the molested who where involved in the case.
First of all you should know some things about this documentary. Arnold Friedman, a school teacher who held computer classes for children in his home, was clearly involved in pedophilia and had molested children by his own admission on more than one occasion (he actually confessed to abusing most of his computer class but also two boys of a friend he had met some time ago). Basically Arnold had previous sexual problems in his youth and after spending time with a psychiatrist found he could no longer cope with his life except to obtain child pornography from Europe for his release. One of his packages was intercepted by the feds who then proceeded to see if he would send them some magazines (and he did) and so raided his home and found Arnold's secret hidden stash. Seems like a clear cut case of child abuse, right? ... but it ain't.
The police involved in the investigation started to interview children who had attended Arnold's computer class. There was obviously pressure applied to the children to make-up stories, including a shocking interview with a former student who is caught clearly in a lie in front of the camera. The documentary also reveals that the police had used poor tactics to get the children to confess with statements like - If you do not tell us what happened then you will be a homosexual forever... or putting some students under hypnosis to find out what went on during Friedman's computer class... and this is really what is at the heart of the story.
Some children, now older, say that Arnold did absolutely nothing sexual in class except for teaching very boring standard computer lessons, and others who say that he practically ran Hell in there. However many of the students kept coming back to the class and their parents did not notice a thing wrong with their kids. Also video tapes that the students say Arnold made of them where never recovered.... but there is more... when the students started to confess they also implicated Arnold's son, Jesse Friedman, in the attacks - so Jesse got into trouble as well and then.... you have to see the rest. The events off-camera in the Court room where some of the parents encounter Jesse is some of the most remarkable, if not the most remarkable, SOUND ever captured on film, and for that alone is worth viewing (you can see a part of this sequence at the end of the trailer).
There are also some neat little twists in the end that really bend what you thought about some of Arnold's more immediate family - a very tough choice weighs heavily on your mind when it comes, but in many ways it is a case of psychology vs. narrow-mindedness. In fact most of us would probably see it as definitive evidence of something... yet maybe that is what all those who lived in Arnold's community also saw?
Many of the questions poised in CD1 are answered in CD 2, which is really the gem of the box. It is like a Part II. Here you will learn more about the case including the important detail that Arnold confessed to the police that he had molested large segments of student in his home so that he could cut a deal on only molesting three or four (something his family says he did over his guilt about the relationship he had with two boys a long time ago). This confession was leaked and handed out to all the parents who where on the list. Even if their child had denied abuse this was the clincher that caused many parents simply to hook up with the clan and get rid of this problem before it dragged out even longer. Arnold's lawyers did not know this at the time.
As a final note, none of the children ever complained about Friedman attacking them before they where pressed further over a period of several intensive interviews that lasted months. Other individuals where also implicated in the crimes but where never brought to trial. Under case analysis Arnold should have walked like O.J because of the way the case was handled and Jesse certainly should get a retrial but in the end Arnold was one stupid man to be anywhere near children with the problems that he had in not exactly the most innocent situations that one can find themselves in when charged with these crimes. In the end though you could ask yourself one question... would you allow Arnold to hang around your kids? The answer to that question is most definitely NO. However did Arnold abuse all the kids in the way that they described in his home during computer classes? Probably not, but he did abuse two other boys elsewhere. Basically the documentary ends like a guy getting busted for a bigger crime that they probably didn't commit but may have committed a similar crime on a smaller scale some time ago and got away that one. Jesse was just the cherry on the cop's mass abuse hysteria cake. In reality I would also be afraid to let any of those cops near my children. In this documentary there are clearly students, now much older, who where not abused, still believing that they where abused in some horrible fantasies that clearly defy belief and logic.
Disturbing.
Summary of Capturing the Friedmans
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.A Sundance Grand Jury prize winner and a true conversation starter, Capturing the Friedmans travels into one apparently ordinary Long Island family's heart of darkness. Arnold and Elaine Friedman had a normal life with their three sons until Arnold was arrested on multiple (and increasingly lurid) charges of child abuse. Because the Friedmans had documented their own lives with copious home movies, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki is able to sift through their material looking for clues. Yet what emerges is more surreal than fiction: the youngest Friedman son went to jail, the eldest became a birthday-party clown. In the end, we can't be sure whether Arnold Friedman is a monstrous child molester or the victim of railroading. The portrait of a disconnected family is deeply disturbing, either way, and this film is further proof that a documentary can be just as spellbinding as anything a great storyteller dreams up. --Robert Horton
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