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Capturing the Friedmans Directed by Andrew Jarecki, 108 minutes UK release date: 9 April 2004 Rating: ★★★★
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he past year has been a great one for feature length documentaries. It began when Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (BMJ 2002;325:1247), the highest-earning documentary feature of all time, won an Oscar. Spellbound, about an American spelling competition, also achieved a high profile release, as did the semi-documentaries Touching the Void, a story of mountaineers’ survival in the Andes, and American Splendor, about comic book artist Harvey Pekar. Capturing the Friedmans, a documentary about child abuse, is likely to be as successful as these. It is polemical, heart wrenching, suspenseful, at times even funny—and more. At one level, we are voyeurs to a family system where one brother audiotapes family rows and catalogues them. Fortunately for the filmmakers, his older brother went one better and “captured” it all on videotape. So far, reality television—in the shape of programmes such as Big Brother—has brought us only the image of people sitting around drinking watching people sitting
around drinking. This film brings us raw (if expertly and subjectively edited) footage of a real family tearing itself apart. Although it begins with home movie footage, the film charts 15 years from around the time of the first police raid on the Friedmans’ New York home, through investigation and court appearances, to aftermath. At the film’s core come dozens of allegations of child sexual abuse against Arnold Friedman—respected maths teacher, loving husband, and father to three boys—and his son Jesse, who was then 19. Both confessed in 1988 on several counts of paedophilia. Director Andrew Jarecki had never intended to make a film about child abuse, but instead one about clowns. In the course of doing so, he discovered that one of his subjects, David Friedman, had another story to tell—that of his father and younger brother. Jarecki later pieced the film together using the home movie footage and interviews with family members. The film is like watching a relentless, animated car crash. At the screening I was at, its all-American home video look and quirky superficiality had people talking in the early minutes. Once the reality impacted, they soon fell silent. For many people, this is as close as they are likely to get to a convicted paedophile. While the Friedmans are the stars of the show, they are assisted by a fascinating supporting “cast.” Once the allegations surface, we meet bungling detectives, one committed policewoman, local lynch mobs, slick lawyers, a surprising co-defendant, and, inevitably, the media.
The Friedmans, a family divided by child abuse allegations
BMJ VOLUME 328
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Director Andrew Jarecki pieced film together from home movie footage
Any family responding to abuse allegations (true or false) against a family member would be torn apart. The Friedmans divide in front of us, and remain divided to this day. Arnold died in prison, but his brother and two of his sons are convinced of his innocence. The youngest, Seth, refused to be interviewed on film, but his captured images give him a starring role. Elaine Friedman (Arnold’s wife, then ex-wife, now widow) accepted the police evidence. At first look this appeared compelling: possession of child pornography, letters, written confessions, credible witnesses, and his plea of guilty. But the on screen testimony of one unreliable witness clouds these certainties. The skill of the filmmakers is not just to swing our judgments like a pendulum, but to challenge why we choose to believe X and ignore the contradictory Y. The film reminds us just how terrible sex abuse is, but how false allegations can be easy to make, but true charges desperately hard to prove. One of my first psychiatric trainers advised me to steer clear of “psychiatric” films and television. Why relive what work puts your way? Despite more clinical experience of the physical and psychological effects of childhood sexual abuse, and more reading than I would care to have done, Capturing the Friedmans is an education, in the best sense of that word. This is a film mercifully free from the usual circus of experts. There are no psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, or other second guessers. The realities and the distress make for compelling viewing. Peter Byrne senior lecturer in psychiatry, University College London
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reviews
Benetton team designs WHO’s road safety posters But are images too elegant to drive home true horror of road trauma?
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oad trauma is a leading cause of death and lingering disability around the world. However, low and middle income countries bear a disproportionate part of the global burden. As safety standards improve along with the infrastructure in wealthier nations, the persistent mechanisation of industry and increasingly motorised transportation in developing countries thunders well ahead of the apparatus for treatment and prevention. In response to this too often ignored epidemic, the World Health Organization has dedicated its World Health Day 2004 to road safety, launching a one year campaign. WHO has commissioned several posters from Fabrica, the research and development communication centre of Italian fashion company Benetton, to convey the severe
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consequences of road injury throughout the world and to remind policy makers, the media, and the public of the “disastrous consequences of the world’s road safety crisis.” The posters—showing images such as a parking lot full of spaces for disabled people and a length of highway lined with corpses stretching to infinity—are arresting and partly succeed. However, in lower income countries the message may seem more opaque and it is likely that important members of the intended audience will miss the gravity of the message. Policy makers in countries whose main problem is a high proportion of mixed traffic, bicycles, and motorcars, or whose fellow citizens use primarily twowheeled transportation or unsafe mass transportation, may not appreciate the
elegance of several disabled parking spaces, or a long stretch of deserted highway strewn with corpses, however grim. Indeed, for some, surfaced roads might ameliorate part of the problem. The true tragedy of road traffic injury, and so much of trauma in general, is that often it can be avoided. The axiom of trauma as a “surgical disease” continues to be taught, but an even more important feature is that it might be preventable. While the visuals of the posters might not carry the magnitude of their captions well, WHO must be lauded for championing injury as one of the world’s truly neglected epidemics. James Maskalyk emergency physician, Toronto, Canada
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reviews
PERSONAL VIEW
SOUNDINGS
Road Trauma, a socially accepted horror movie
Meetings
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melted into the asphalt after his car burst have the incredible good fortune to into flames; a body without a head, the head have been born in a rich, peaceful counlater found inside the crash helmet which is try. I know nothing of war or terrorism, inside the thorax. And implicated in so apart from the images I see on the television many of these kinds of incidents are speed news. But if television wars have any “justifiand alcohol. cation,” then what of the war that I have to There are two types of horror. The most attend to—a war that kills every day? striking is the visual, the sight of the lesions Absurdly, in my country, Belgium, a total of and the physical suffering; the other, the 1500 people die each year, with a cortège of most intolerable, is the suffering of the thousands mentally or physically disabled. families. How to explain to a mother that I Worldwide, my war kills millions. failed to resuscitate her I cannot count the daughter who was reversed number of dead or disabled The numbers of over by a car? What should people that I have dealt with I say to the children whose over the past 20 years in the those killed in drunk father has just killed mobile intensive care unit road crashes rises their mother? He had or in the emergency room. already had his driving Our hospital invests inexorably in an licence revoked for drink large amounts of money in driving. staffing and equipment in absurd way, After 17 years of workorder to improve the imme- adding deaths to ing in a mobile intensive diate on-site care of those care unit, I have many such injured in road traffic deaths stories in my memory. Why crashes. The hope is to do we accept such horror? Is it a reflection of minimise the consequences of major our society, our wanting everything and trauma. I know that this is not enough. For immediately? A key factor is speed, but years our hospital has taken part in national speed itself means nothing, it depends on and international scientific studies that aim the road conditions and the road environto improve trauma care. Our efforts leave us ment. Speed limits must be set according to with the taste of ashes. Whatever care we the road hierarchy, and people must underoffer, at best we only glue together the pieces stand why it has to be so. And alcohol? We in the hope of some small benefits. took part in the Belgian trauma toxicology The numbers of those killed in road study. Because of individual rights, we could crashes rises inexorably in an absurd way, not take blood for blood alcohol measureadding deaths to deaths. I know the only ments on every injured driver but only those rational solution is prevention. But what can hospitalised for 24 hours. Despite the bias, a small group of trauma doctors do? we found that over 40% of Perhaps share with you injured drivers were drunk, some of our stories and and, taking into account memories. Please don’t How to explain other drugs and treatments, think this is post-traumatic to a mother that over 70% of injured drivers stress disorder or burnout. were intoxicated in some We continue to live and I failed to way. work with energy, despite resuscitate her Statistics also tell a the horrors that have been story. In Scandinavia no burnt so indelibly on our daughter who is permitted when memories and that we can was reversed over alcohol driving but in Belgium we recount so clearly and so pay for our more liberal effortlessly as if replaying a by a car? approach with 1000 lives a road horror movie: a broken skull, open and emptied year. Drink driving is like of its brain; human parts scattered so wide firing a shotgun in a crowded place, but not from the crash scene that it is difficult to in the eyes of Belgian law. In hospital, we reconstitute the bodies; a mother nearby work hard, but, with all our efforts, at best we screaming her despair; the shredded bodies will only minimise the consequences. For, as of pedestrians thrown by a car over a hedge long as the war on the roads is sanctioned, in a village street; the body of a man who has there is no hope. So my job must be to work hard on trauma care but also to tell my stories. I’m angry and sometimes I’m a little We welcome submissions for the personal view desperate. Help me to end the war on the section. These should be no more than 850 words roads. and should be sent electronically via our website. For information on how to submit a personal view Guy Mazairac coordinator, mobile intensive care online, see http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/ unit, Centre Hospitalier Régional Namur, Belgium 7360/DC1/1
In my appraisal my colleague, glancing through my CV, asked me why I was never involved in any healthcare politics or management. The reason, I was slightly embarrassed to admit, is that I seem to be startlingly ineffective at meetings. I have never been quite sure why this is. I used to come away slightly rattled that any contribution I made was uniformly ignored. After a particularly bad run I began to worry that my support for any particular plan of local healthcare provision was its kiss of death. Whenever I vocally supported a particular course of action it would be greeted with a muted silence that guaranteed its failure. I briefly played with the idea of some sort of complex double bluff strategy but quickly wound myself into a tight, self iterative paralysis. I watch in some awe those few colleagues who have the art of steering meetings effectively. They are usually coaxers and uniformly courteous. Their central characteristic is that they exhibit a trust in their opponents’ sincerity even when they believe them wrong. This allows them to argue clearly and cogently without offence being taken. I had thought this was a skill I possessed but my family tell me that I argue like a slightly irascible and patronising Latin teacher. But those effective colleagues do seem to be a rather rare breed. Huge cohorts of healthcare workers have been drafted in to manage the NHS at a local level and most have little experience. This often seems to be manifested in a willingness to use meaningless management speak uncritically, and a burgeoning of fluffy mission statements that state the banally obvious. Although I avoid the meetings themselves, I can’t avoid the countless pages generated from local policy groups, prescribing groups, liaison groups, Uncle Tom Cobbly, and all. I try to read some of them but find that I no longer understand a lot of it. Sometimes it is the denseness of the acronyms that defeats me, and sometimes it is the long, opaque paragraphs that sound as though they should mean something but somehow don’t. Orwell said that the great enemy of clear language was insincerity. “When there is a gap between someone’s real and declared aims, that person turns instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting ink.” There is certainly a fair bit of ink around in our part of the world. Kevin Barraclough general practitioner, Painswick, Gloucestershire
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