Sing Sing
At a glance...
- Directed by Greg Kwedar
- Released in 2023
- Runtime 105 minutes
- Watched at The Northwest Film Forum
- Final feelings: poignant, moving, honest
If you believe the common truism that every person is capable of genuine artistic expression, then the natural conclusion of that belief has to be in the abolition of prisons. Sing Sing is one such work of art that expresses this contradiction that haunts our seemingly humane and justified social order. It derives its power from its intimate perspective, both from the camera's viewpoint and from the casting of real-life participants of the theater program at Sing Sing. Truly it is a gift when film can pull so close to the source of the mundane magic of real life. Divine Eye, played by himself(!), represents the exact kind of person that is written off in our culture as fundamentally irredeemable, but here we see how justified his foibles are. His standoffishness, his fear of vulnerability, and especially his relationship to violence are reflections of his environment, not just from prison but his entire upbringing. When watching him get into conflict with Divine G, I think of the many conflicts I have heard of from my own connections inside, and how they all felt fundamentally resolvable if all the participants were not trapped in a deeply hostile and zero-sum environment. Divine Eye's ultimate growth and success as an actor and as a man calls into question our most basic assumptions about criminals, art, performance, and the roles we think convicts, and especially Black men in the criminal legal system, can take in our society.
I have no idea what Sing Sing is like to someone who just accepts the status quo as being the natural order of things. Maybe if I have a criticism of this film to reasonably offer, it is that by focusing on the seemingly extraordinary nature of the program and its attendants (and it's teacher! in my experience it is extremely hard to find outside sponsors for programs at prisons!), we cannot easily see that there's something else awaiting all of us beyond the institution of prison. Maybe there's a person out there who will watch this film and see it as a heroic story of how the right people got out of prison, and we can conveniently wipe everyone still inside out of sight, out of mind. Sing Sing, I think, leaves room for this liberal interpretation, and that's maybe a missed opportunity. You sit, you watch, and you cry, but it's a hopeful and enriching cry. The hope is for you.
For us, in the audience, we are conveniently separated out from the consciousness that demands all prisons be dismantled forever. In effect we are like the audience of the very plays these people are putting on. In Sing Sing, the audience exists in a tacit envelopment of the program and any interaction between the two groups is represented mostly in the first 5 minutes of the film when the real Divine G cameo's as a fan wanting a signature (though Divine Eye's introduction into the group also explores some of these ideas). In real life, however, the programs I know of put on by LGBT groups in prisons are fragile and often in constant conflict with the administration and with other inmates, sometimes even other queer inmates (and this phenomenon is exploited by the institution itself to great effect)! From what little I've seen in Washington State, the relationship between the "group" and the "audience" is a fundamental tension, but you won't see much of it on this screen. It's not inherently bad, but it might make this feel a little closer to good, clean, pat-on-the-back feel-good entertainment than it has to.
Although, there is the ending to consider. In real life, Divine G eventually got out of prison, but I wonder what would have happened if we pointed the camera to someone in the troupe who stayed locked up when he left. I wonder what would have happened if we had imagined that he stayed locked up entirely. Could such an image agitate an audience member towards participation in this story? I don't know. But even in this punched-up fantasy of the actual RTA theater program, we see Divine G look over to the other cell as he gets ready to leave. Inside, he sees a painfully young Black man looking back at him (looking back at us). It's a brief moment, but it feels damning. Even in this happy ending, the system unceasingly churns through people. In this world, even our most hopeful fantasies are morally bankrupt. I'm not ready to call Sing Sing placating, and I'm not ready to call it revolutionary, so I will just call it the word that moves in me when I think back on the film, and that is honest.