Stevie

It's funny how many want to review the filmmaker instead of the film. Here we see a family of people who rarely know how to be happy, and the filmmaker himself does make some unwise decisions. But that's not the point; we can't expect Mr James to see around his own blind spots -- and yet sometimes he does, and so does Stevie himself.

I see this as something of a redemption film (even if that redemption is seriously flawed): every major participant comes to a better understanding through the events explored, sometimes with surprising clarity. No, their lives aren't going to be great; that's just not in the cards. But a lot of hard truth gets laid out, often from surprising sources (Patricia for the fiancee, Greg for the Steves). There are no easy or simple answers, except possibly to show the universality of human needs -- and faults. Recommended. 8/10

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.

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.

I had a tough time watching the scene where the camera is on Steve James as Tonya tells him that at least something good came of all this, that at least a film was made about Stevie. I didn't like how long they allowed the camera to catch Steve's emotional reaction and it seemed a little too obvious...like the scene in Broadcast News where William Hurt whips up some tears to show on camera. I don't like that kind of manipulation. However, that being said, I don't mean to imply that Steven James wasn't sincere in his reaction; it was his editing choice that seems insincere.

It's a complicated film. Just like Stevie the person, there are no easy answers; unlike Stevie the person, life is not simply black and white. I do think the title reflects many things: the subject as he is now, the director's memory of Stevie the little boy, and the director himself. I don't believe that Stevie was exploited, but there is something in the intention of the film that is unsettling. And I think that unsettling feeling is an okay thing to have. If I taught a film class, this is a film I would definitely want to use to explore the nature of point of view, the ethics of documentary film-making, and the nature of simply being human.

I adored Tonya's friend in Chicago. Tonya, her friend, and Wanda reflect the very best about people and shatter easy stereotypes. These are all smart, independent, warm, thoughtful women, which is just wonderful to see in a documentary film.

As a documentarian, Steve James has a lot to learn, especially about editing. STEVIE rings in at more than two and a half hours but should have been cut to 90 minutes or less. In any film, every scene needs to count, to have a narrative purpose, and a movie needs to have some definite dramatic shape and narrative drive to hold its audience and justify its running time. STEVIE doesn't exhibit any of these qualities. In fact, it's an overlong, meandering mess that soon becomes a very tedious viewing experience. Bad form is one thing but bad faith is something else entirely. To be blunt, the implicit class politics of this film really suck. Steve James says he is making a film about Stephen Fielding out of a sense of guilt for not having kept up with Fielding in the decade since serving as Fielding's Big Brother. Maybe the guilt is real but the film smacks of a kind of pitying bourgeois condescension toward "white trash" life that conceals what is at base a lurid, voyeuristic fascination with the awful ignorance, dysfunction, and backwardness of the rural poor that get educated yuppies morally exercised but also affords them an exhiliarating sense of their own superiority. Much of middle America is a wasteland of bigotry, violence, ignorance, susperstition, and sloth. The film's implicit message? Aren't we glad we're not them...