Stevie

I just saw Stevie today at a film festival and it really blew me away. Its harrowing to see the life of someone who was passed off from person to person and only rarely got a glimpse of a happier life. He is used as a pawn in the relationship between his grandmother and the mother who didn't want him (and took it out in abuse). Later he is sent through the foster care system where he is eventually raped. Bits of his medical record reveal the degree to which we can predict the effects that this sort of instability will bring to a person's life, which makes it all the more angering that noone was there to prevent it.

In one particularly powerful scene you see Stevie reunited with the kindest of his early foster parents and the joy it brings to him. There is almost a complete regression in him to a childlike state, like he is trying to restart his childhood at the point where he was happy.

Steve James does not try to excuse the heinous crime Stevie has committed, rather he forces you to see the complicity we all have in (including in a very real sense himself) allowing a system that ignores the needs of children.

This, to my mind, is how a documentary should be. The filmmaker makes no direct appeal for sympathy, he doesn't try to explain things, he just shows what is and lets the involved parties state their versions of what happened. In short, he documents: he does not propagandize.

Rarely have two and a half hours of viewing slipped by so rapidly for me. I was near tears at the end of it--not because my emotions had been "tweaked" or played with by the film's creator, but simply out of a feeling of despair for our miserable human condition. This superb film lays a lot of truths about humanity pitilessly bare.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

According to sociologists, we are a product of our own culture. Naive about the true reality of others, many of us blithely make pronouncements about what people should or should not do to have a good life. Then a movie like "Stevie" comes along - a movie that shows a complex, rough-edged world in which there are no simple answers. To me, "Stevie" was kick-in-the-teeth reality - not voyeurism.

This movie reminded me of a number of other movies that give one a view into how others live... The "Bicycle Thief," "Chan is Missing," "The Harder They Come," "Milagro Beanfield War," "The Postman," "Secrets and Lies," and "Ping Pong," to name a few. I thought the director of "Stevie," the OTHER Steve, did an excellent job of showing people and their environment without trivializing them. I *cared* about the people in this film; I wanted them to love each other, work out their problems, and overcome their secrets and lies. Like my own real life, however, things don't always get tied up nicely in a pretty bow.

I think that "Stevie" is an excellent snap/slap of cold water for those of us who think we know it all. Life isn't simple, whether we're up to our necks in alligators or see ourselves as the alligator hunter.

I watched Stevie last night at work...I work in a children's home with young children who were sexually abused or are sexual offenders (the kids were asleep when I watched this). He spent six years of his life in a place like this which was supposed to help him. It's very hard to get through to kids like this and even though people like me try, the kids do not get the therapy they so desperately need. Did anyone see the way Stevie backed down when faced with anyone that was dominant or made him responsible for his actions? His family and the filmmaker were enablers and told him what he wanted to hear and never addressed the issue. If he were to be held responsible for his actions all his life by the people he cared about and respected and not just told things to pacify him, maybe he would be a different person. I thought that this was a wonderful documentary and it makes me take the work that I do much more seriously because I see how it can turn out.

First of all, let me repeat what others have already stated...lots of of people are reared in the the same, and worse, abject conditions as Stevie...I grew up with people who had it just as bad if not worse.

The trick is rising above all that...there's no sin in making a mistake...the sin comes in making the same mistake over and over again and expecting the world to to say "Poor little thing...what a life..."...We've all in one form or another had less than heavenly lives...

The self-serving film-maker needs his ass kicked for preening in front of the cameras all but demanding our collective forgiveness...Sorry, I gave at the office.

As to the film's subject, this kid had deep seated problems LONG before he decided to molest an 8 year old girl...and for God's sake, let's not mention the hell that angel will suffer for years to come.

Yes, child abuse is a self-fulfilling cycle...that far too often forgets the little ones who suffer in silence.

I consider myself a political progressive...well-educated and sickened by the horror stories about the "poor Stevies" of the world who are pitied...I'll save my prayers, thoughts and energies for their victims...Let's hope that becomes the case for more people.