टाइम

"Time" is an attention getting doc done thru the personal diary like videos of one Fox Rich a Louisiana mom of 6 who's faced almost 20 years without her husband Rob who's still locked up for armed robbery. It preaches faith, hope, and love, at the same time you see Fox's and the kids loss and pain without no husband or dad. Plus it looks at the prison system as being cruel and unkind and the doc promotes and ask that the criminal justice system be more forgiving. Done in black and white this is a focus and feature on human life, family, love, and most of all release and happiness as it's freedom from the system.

As "Time" (2020 release; 81 min.) opens, Sybil Fox Richardson is talking directly into her smart phone camera: "Today is July 23. My husband is in jail" and she shows off her highly pregnant belly. Born in 1971, she met her husband at age 16, and they eventually start a hip hop clothing store in Shreveport, LA. Then in the late 1990s things go wrong, very wrong, and her husband is sentenced to 60 years in jail... At this point we are less than 10 min. Into the film...

Couple of comments: this is the latest from director Garrett Bradley, who has done a variety of prior short documentary and TV work before. Here she takes a closer look at the travails of a women who is is trying to get her husband released from jail (which she terms "nothing less than slavery"), while raising six boys. The film itself is presented as a mixture smart phone footage and regular camera work, but all of it being brought in B&W footage only. The film also jumps back and forth in time over the last 2 decades. In the end it brings an intimate look at one woman's battle for justice reform. "I will be the voice for the voiceless!", she thunders at one of her public lectures. The movie gets better as it plays out, among other reasons because you really buy into the social plight of this woman and her family. In addition to the remarkable photography, the movie also sports an amazing score, much of it solo piano.

The movie had a very short and limited theater run last Fall, and sadly I had missed it then. I recently caught it on Amazon Prime. In fact, i watched this the very evening of the 2021 Oscars ceremony, where it was nominated for Best Documentary Oscar. Alas, it didn't win (that Oscar went to "My Octopus Teacher"). Regardless, if you have any interest in social justice issues or simply want to see a deeply human story playing out over 2 decades, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

I actually saw this because of its Oscar nomination for best Documentary Feature but I don't really like it. It's both messy and empty. It feels like it's missing a lot of informations and explanations. And it's chaotic when it comes to character identities. As for the story itself, it seems powerful but if you think well about it, it doesn't fully make sense.

Tried to find a court case for these characters. I did not. Instead I found an appeal case of a Robert Richardson and a nephew of his wife, both who did not attempt to rob a bank as the movie implies but actually robbed it and were caught later that day. The only mention of a Sybil Fox was during the trial when both Rob and Sybil, presented as his wife, tried to tamper with the jury by visiting their homes and coercing them. Two of them were replaced during the trial for this, and in effect they tried to create a possibility for the trial to be ruled a mistrial when the nephew argued he couldn't received a fair trial because of what the two did. Otherwise there was nothing about her being involved in any way. My thought is that she was a placeholder in the story for the nephew, either he did not agree for this part of his life to be publicized or they did not agree on the proceeds for the publications and had to be swapped for a made up character, hence her struggle in the prison system might be fabricated. I can't point it out exactly since the case eludes me but... This is, at best, an artistic adaptation of a real event than an actual documentary of said event. Something like Fargo, but that's it. It's very one sided and misleading, while hiding behind a real event to obtain credibility. On the part of the victimisation, that court document showed a lot of mistakes he did, and the whole focus was on gaming the system in failing the trial. Are the 60 years excessive? Yes! But a victim, he's not, when the had the chance to come clean. Poor life choices will lead to severe punishment and while the punishment in his case seems exaggerated it might serve as a warning about outcomes and personal responsibility in face of clear evidence. Out there there are other cases, far more damaging than his, yet less dramatised and faked. Another striking thing was the changes in names: Sibil Fox, Sybil Fox, Sibil Rich, Sybil Fox Richardson, Rob Rich, Robert Richardson. If it were supposed to be a documentary, it should contain clear identities. This leads me to suspect that they are trying to hide ways for people to arrive at the actual court case and see for themselves what is instead of being told a one-sided story about the prison system. And even regarding this in reality is not the actual issue, since that sentence, the length, the conditions, were part of the justice system (judges and jury) outcome. The issues with the prison system are different and pertain mostly to the kids in this instance. Chances have to be made, abolishing won't be one of them. Overall the mockup-umentary is hard to swallow. Works as an artistic work, but the pushed narrative as being a real event is mostly for the gullible.

"It's almost like slavery time, like the white man keep you there until he figures it's time for you to get out." Robert Richardson's mother.

It's not what you would expect, this personal documentary narrated by Sibil Fox Richardson about the 21 years she waited for her husband, Robert, to be released from prison for a robbery he committed with her in 1997 in Shreveport, La. It is a quiet essay with almost professional grade home video for Sibil as she narrates the patient struggle to get her husband's sentence reduced from 65 years.

Although such a draconian sentence begs for the sobriquet of "Black racism," the doc, deftly directed by Garrett Bradley, makes few allusions to that societal challenge. It is rather, as its title succinctly suggests, a treatise on the passage of time with its attendant sorrows and its equally powerful hope: "God looks over the sparrows, Sibil. He's going to look over us," says Robert.

Sibil took a plea bargain of twelve years in order to attend to what would be six children, as handsome and articulate as their mom and dad. No weeping and gnashing, just melancholy longing to take time back to when the family had so much promise. Smartly, Bradley shows videos in the final shots of the family in reverse as if time could be altered but never would be.

He also makes the right decision to leave the doc in black and white in order to blend the past with the present. Unlike other documentaries about carceral injustice, Time does not demand we accept Robert as victim-it accepts his mistake and subtly suggests only that the sentence was excessive.

By showing the talented Sibil doggedly working for reform (she could have been a preacher) and her exemplary family soldiering on without dad is the best argument for careful, unbiased sentencing in a system that fails to account for incarceration's effect on everyone, the convict's family and us. Law and order sometimes forget the human factor.

"But at my back I always hear/ Time's winged chariot hurrying near." Andrew Marvel