Little Pink House

If you love your home and despise heavy-handed and corrupt government, this film is for you. The actors are very believable, the story is compelling, and the cinematography is great.

I was fortunate enough to meet Susette Kelo before seeing the movie. It is amazing how closely Catherine Keener gets her right; her look, voice, shyness and inner strength. The movie also does an excellent job of balancing the political story with the personal one. It's a very fine line because with too much of one you'd have a documentary and too much of the other you wouldn't know what was going on. Well worth the price of admission.

This film gets to you. As a retired constitutional lawyer, I'm usually hard on Hollywood's typical cutting-corners presentations of legal procedures and issues. And as a life-long performer of various kinds, I usually view acting with a critical eye. This film did a great job of both: the actors playing Susan Kelo and her boyfriend were so believable & created so much empathy for the characters, that it was actually a wrench to see photos of the story's real-life principals at the end, to be reminded by those that it *was* acting. The writer and director did an excellent job of making the substance of complex & very serious legal issues accessible, and the procedural steps clear and comprehensible. Even the scene of a Supreme Court argument, usually something very, very difficult to distill simply, was tight, succinct and clear. Throughout, the human elements of the story predominated: what eminent domain did to the people of one neighborhood -- and the human elements were very engrossing. The villains may seem to outside eyes just a slight touch caricatured, but I am sure that, through the eyes of Susan Kelo and her neighbors, the bureaucrats, politicians & functionaries who knowingly stole their homes, deserved every bit of those portrayals. An excellent job overall!

For the history for the US, federal state and local government have been able to take private property "for public use" if no reasonable alternatives . It is, in fact in the Constitution. BUT the left Supreme court justices, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, along with centrist Kennedy decided to reinterpret this and conflate a new insanely broad "public purposes" allowance of seizure with "public use." Public use meant a needed road, fire station, library, extending an airport, etc. Public purposes means anything any government entity decides is in the public interest: specifically anything that will increase the tax base. So if your home is single story, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy decided that your town, count or state can seize your home and sell it to any developer or corporation that would build something larger, be it a corporate headquarters, or just a bigger home for someone else to live in, on the basis that this increases taxes which is supposed to be a "public purpose." This documentary, while slightly uneven tells the story of the court case and the shameful decision by corporate lackeys like Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, breyer etc.

I read one review that felt this film was depressing. Interestingly, I found it the opposite. I found it encouraging and even somewhat uplifting because of the fight and determination that Susette Kelo (the real life woman who we meet at the end of the film who inspired the story). It opens eyes to political and big corporate deceit. It opens eyes to how our voices can be heard and the importance of the fight. This film is not about being entertained as much as it is an important one to watch. The performance are also outstanding. Not overly dramatized. Honest and to the point. Highly recommended.