“RTA (Rehabilitation Through the Arts) helps prisoners develop critical life skills through the arts, modeling an approach to the justice system based on human dignity rather than punishment.” So says their website, https://rta-arts.org/ After being approached multiple times by other production companies offering to take their program to the big screen, A24’s reputation for taking on the complicated scripts got them the gig.
SING SING offers few surprises, but it is not a cliché or tropey prison movie that confines itself within the stone walls of the genre. The story arcs are comfortable, with organic acting by people who were convicts. Scenes are allowed to play out with actors revealing the pieces of themselves that moved them through the program and back into the world.
Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) portrays the director and writer from the outside world who holds the group together and brings the member's ideas to the stage. Raci has a two-pack-a-day face, framed by a hairstyle that proves he don’t care how they do it in the big city. He has kindness and strength, and whiteness that contrasts with most of the cast members. Perhaps another actor in this role would oversell a racial power dynamic that would pile a distracting issue on SING SING. But Raci’s character uses his powers to guide the cast, not control, but is not afraid to face anger that threatens to derail the process. A beautifully nuanced and subtle performance worthy of the big screen over a glass one.
Even more impressive than Raci are the actors playing themselves as they were back in the day. Colman Domingo, himself not a convict, is an award-winning actor who plays Devine G, the de facto leader of the convict actors. Domingo sometimes overpowers the non-professional actors but doesn’t overpower the film.
Clarence 'Divine Eye' Maclin, playing himself, has authenticity so solid he dominates any scene where he is on screen. The evolution of his performance of a Hamlet soliloquy parallels the cast's transformation. His final rendering of Shakespeare’s words is no less spellbinding than Olivier’s. Divine Eye’s presence never relents and never disappoints.
Sean 'Dino' Johnson is a man who lets his anger go before it consumes and corrupts his soul, which brings a calming influence on an incendiary cast.
The rest of the cast is no less remarkable; each deserving a paragraph of praise.
When the end credits roll, you will notice many instances of an actor “playing himself.” Maybe this speaks to the success of the RTA program, and this can be a surprise. How can these people not be professional actors? The program made them actors, professional or not.
SING SING plucks many of the emotional strings one expects from a success story ripe with devastating failures along the way. It’s forgivable, given that SING SING is crafted so well. The audience's visceral reaction is audible and reminds the viewer they are watching a movie in the real world. This movie should be seen with other people who will likely need a tissue, too.
A movie about the transformative nature of art has to have a little plasticity to keep out of the ruts of all the movies about the transformative nature of art that have come before. SING SING shows the viewer the process from the gritty beginnings to the still gritty but ongoing progress in the right direction. These men do not transform into angelically palatable versions of the men they were. They still have to live in a world of prison and, upon release, be convicts in a world outside the prison. The real world, a place as horrifying to them as confinement is to most viewers. But the movie spends more time out of the ruts than in them due to the story being told by the convicts in their own voices. Voices that have not been tamed by the director Greg Kwedar (Transpecos) or bleached into something pliable for the majority demographic. SING SING is not preachy. It walks the walk. The RTA curates respect between the prisoners with learning skills to channel rage through art rather than their fists. We see this in real-time with real words from real convicts. It’s not us-and-them, and this invites everyone to see the movie and its magic.
SING SING was shot on 16mm film, which is not the easiest way to make a movie. Real movie film, especially a smaller format than the standard 35mm cinema stock, renders the graininess that sets the tone of a prison but gives the warm tones AI has yet to recreate digitally—the warm tones that art brings to the coldest of existence.
Dang, i was expecting colorfully animated, cheerfully undemanding entertainment with a solid voice cast and a warm-hearted -- albeit familiar -- storyline.
Posted by: Valérie Lépine Karnik | September 07, 2024 at 09:20 AM