For me, there are two ways to rate this docu-series. The first is on an emotional or abstract level. The second is purely technical.
This six-part documentary, or docu-series, somewhat follows in the line of other true crime docu-series of late such as the Making a Murderer about Steven Avery or The Jinx, on Robert Durst. There aren't as many "twists" as with the Steven Avery story – Browder's is pretty straightforward. But the structure of storytelling is so noticeable so as to be distracting. Each episode follows a formula: presage the episode, then conflict builds to a climax, then a summary of the episode, then a teaser of the next episode, all woven together in a highly stylized way. As this pattern repeats, you hear certain sound bites more than once, you see the same pieces of footage again and again interpolated with close-ups of speeded-up clocks, to the point I wondered if I'd inadvertently replayed an episode. I found myself thinking that the whole thing was stretched out to fill six episodes when three would have contained it – the length of a feature film.
At the same time, this repetitiveness might be deliberate, meant to achieve an emotional end rather than just keep the brain stimulated and interested – we hear Browder tell ABC's Nightline at least a dozen times that he refused to plead guilty because he didn't do anything. We hear Van Jones say more than once how Browder wasn't a perfect person, but the position he took was perfect. We see the same security footage from Rikers multiple times, reinforcing the brutality of the experience. It's not enough, the filmmakers seem to be saying, to show you this just once. You're going to have an experience that evokes the experience Browder himself had – an endless string of court dates leading to adjournment, repetitive violence; system inadequacy on multiple levels ad nauseam. So, in this way, the film's technique is effective.
Some cynical viewers are likely to say, then, that it's the manipulation of the filmmakers which provoke an emotional response to sympathize with Browder and his ordeal. I don't think so. I think the filmmakers used the medium to present some small sliver of what his ordeal was like so there was something – beyond a kneejerk judgement – to truly sympathize *with.*
It's an old trope – "I'm gonna put the *system* on trial!" – but it's never been more apposite than it is in the case of Kalief Browder. We could simply be told – in a short news article or even in an internet meme – that 97% of criminal cases go to plea bargain, that due to a limited number of judges and criminal defense attorneys, without plea bargaining, the system would collapse. We could be told, then, that if a man claims he's innocent of an allegation (theft of a backpack), and gets denied bail because he broke probation by being arrested for allegedly stealing said backpack, and then languishes in one of the most violent prisons in the world while exercising his constitutional right to a trial
for THREE YEARS – just knowing these facts doesn't pack the full punch of sitting through the footage of Browder getting gang-beaten or witnessing his mother break down on camera.
Van Jones, at one point observes that, like with Syria, the casualties are "just a number" until one child washes up on a beach – then the world takes notice. Jones says, "Browder is that baby." Certainly Browder got the world to pay attention to the major flaws in the New York criminal justice system. But I like what someone else says in the documentary even better – that Browder, in standing up for his rights and refusing to cop a plea for something he says he didn't do, no matter how bad the violence of jail, the torture of endless months of solitary confinement, acts like America's last true patriot. And I think this is where, today more than ever, America needs to really come to terms with itself in defining and understanding what patriotism really is.
10/10 stars.
