Documenting a troubled family
"Silly Billy" is a clown so legendary on the children's party circuit in Manhattan that a few years back he was profiled by the New Yorker. Those who have seen him in action rank him as New York's No. 1 clown, so dexterous at twisting balloon animals, so effortless at roping the attention of distractible toddlers, that many also rank him among the great performance artists. The cliche about clowns is that they make others laugh to keep themselves from crying. This is most certainly the case with "Silly Billy," whose real name is David Friedman, and whose family is the subject of Capturing the Friedmans. Andrew Jarecki's wrenching film chronicles how the 1987 charges of pedophilia against David's father, Arnold, an award-winning physics teacher, and his brother, Jesse, splintered their Great Neck household.
"Silly Billy" is a clown so legendary on the children's party circuit in Manhattan that a few years back he was profiled by the New Yorker. Those who have seen him in action rank him as New York's No. 1 clown, so dexterous at twisting balloon animals, so effortless at roping the attention of distractible toddlers, that many also rank him among the great performance artists.
The cliche about clowns is that they make others laugh to keep themselves from crying. This is most certainly the case with "Silly Billy," whose real name is David Friedman, and whose family is the subject of Capturing the Friedmans. Andrew Jarecki's wrenching film chronicles how the 1987 charges of pedophilia against David's father, Arnold, an award-winning physics teacher, and his brother, Jesse, splintered their Great Neck household.
As dramatic as a Euripides tragedy about a curse against a clan, as confrontational as a Eugene O'Neill family meltdown, Capturing the Friedmans is also about the difficulty of recovering the truth about child molesters, especially when the molester may be your own father.
"My Three Sons they were not," reports a detective with the sex- crimes unit in Nassau County, describing the Friedmans.
Fortunately for Jarecki, Arnold and his eldest son, David, documented every birth, vacation, birthday and Thanksgiving dinner. In these merriest and most wholesome of home movies starring Arnold and Elaine and their three boys, David, Seth and Jesse, initially we see evidence that the Friedmans are very much like a '60s sitcom family.
Everything is evidence in this astounding movie that frustrates the moviegoer's natural instinct to identify with the hero. There are no heroes. There is definitely a villain - Arnold, who admits to molesting boys, but not those he was charged with. But mostly there are victims, some of whose relationship with the truth is, shall we say, inconsistent. One gets the sense that everybody here is a performance artist, including some of the prosecutors and plaintiffs. In large part it's the story about the mutability of truth in a case without any physical evidence except for a stash of pedophile porn magazines in the Friedman basement.
Capturing the Friedmans isn't like the classic Japanese drama Rashomon, which suggested that one person's perspective of an event gave him a different truth from the person standing elsewhere. Jarecki's movie is about situational truth, how testimony shifts with the winds of public outrage and lawyerly pragmatism.
When Arnold, always the sun around whom his sons revolve, and his youngest son, Jesse, then 19, get indicted on multiple counts of rape of boys in a computer class, David grabs the camera to document how Arnold's satellites spin out.
Jarecki frontloads the film with the testimony of the police detectives who convince you that Arnold and Jesse were guilty of games that sexually violated their students. But then Jarecki introduces Debbie Nathan, a reporter whose specialty is sex-abuse cases, and the particular hysteria they generate, who persuades you that police and prosecutors may have created a climate that encouraged victims to exaggerate what happened.
What's the truth? Finally, this movie about the loss of innocence suggests that everybody is guilty - including those who would make the Friedman family circus a spectacle. Who is a more tragic figure than Arnold, who claims innocence but pleads guilty to multiple counts of molestation because he may have been guilty of more horrible acts?
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
Capturing the Friedmans *** 1/2 (out of four stars)
Produced by Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling, directed by Jarecki, photography by Adolfo Doring, music by Andrea Morricone, distributed by Magnolia Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 47 mins.
Himself. . . Arnold Friedman
Himself. . . David Friedman
Herself. . . Elaine Friedman
Himself. . . Jesse Friedman
Herself. . . Debbie Nathan
Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (adult audiences only, sexual candor about child molestation)
Showing at: Ritz at the Bourse and Ritz Sixteen/NJ