Ava DuVernay's Central Park Five Murderous Series Is An Elegant Elegance For The Young Lives Of The System



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Niecy Nash (left) and Jharrel Jerome
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima (Netflix)
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If the heartbreaking saga of Central Park Five did not exist, Dick Wolf should have invented it. After all, the case of five black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted for raping and beating a white woman is exactly the kind of thorny and politically heavy story on which Wolf's iconic icon Law and order the franchise was built. Even three decades after the attack and its aftermath, it is not uncommon to hear a Special Victims Unit The detective makes a side reference to the case or the many lessons he has given. From the risks of coercive interrogation to the dangers of a voracious media response, the Central Park Five have served as totem to systemic failure long after their official exoneration.

Drive

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With

Michael K. Williams, Vera Farmiga, Niilly Nash, Felicity Huffman, Blair Underwood, Christopher Jackson, John Leguizamo, Joshua Jackson, Omar Dorsey, Adepero Oduye, Famke Janssen, Aurora Perrineau, William Sadler, Jharrel Jerome, Jovan Adepo, Aunjanue Ellis, Kylie Bunbury, Marsha, Stephanie Blake, Storm Reid, Dascha Polanco, Chris Chalk, Freddy Miyares, Justin Cunningham, Ethan Herisse, Caleel Harris, Marquis Rodriguez, Asante Blackk

Format

Four-part mini-series

The director, Ava DuVernay, does not just tell the story of the Central Park Five as a law enforcement case study, or that the public knows men only by their simplistic nickname. When they see usDuVernay's furious and exasperating four-part Netflix series focuses on the men involved, showing how their lives and communities have been irreparably damaged by incarceration after confessing under extreme duress. Ground Level Approach Contrasts Strongly with Co-Director Ken Burns non-fiction uses the same material, which is more concerned with procedural errors and how growing anxiety about metropolitan crime has created a bloodthirsty crowd.

The elements of the story are well represented in the scripted version of DuVernay, but only to the extent that they are necessary to tell the terrible facts. One night in April 1989, five boys from Harlem – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise – literally fall into a bad crowd. Each child follows a large and heterogeneous group of young black men in Central Park, only to look in horror at the inactive hands of the crowd who punch and beat passersby randomly. The police arrive to prevent the mob from escalating their violent behavior and the five boys who finally end up in the fall find themselves swept away by the wide net of the New York police. Unbeknownst to the boys, who were mostly foreigners before that night, a 28-year-old jogger had been dragged out of a Central Park trail, raped and beaten a few inches from her life.

The jogger's attack does not seem to match the other crimes, in terms of time, space and material evidence, and the boys are initially confused when their interrogations turn to rape of which they know nothing. But this does not prevent city prosecutor Linda Fairstein (Felicity Huffman) from encouraging detectives to gather confessions by any means necessary, with generalized indignation coming under downward political pressure and an entire city demanding swift justice. . This includes the pressure of a real estate developer who once seemed most likely to inspire the main adversary of a new generation. Larry Leisure Suit game, but instead has become the de facto leader of the free world. The limited series is not reluctant to call the president by name and to point out how his public pressure for justice to the height of inclination is now reflected in his policy on blacks and browns.

Asante Blackk
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima (Netflix)

The first episode is the most difficult to watch because it shows in detail the harrowing circumstances that would lead a person, especially a minor, to admit his involvement in a violent crime. It's one thing to hear a voice in a documentary reminiscent of a 30-hour interrogation without food or sleep, outside the presence of parents or a lawyer, and often compounded by physical violence or the threat of physical violence. . But it is quite different to watch these dramatized events, to see the terror and confusion of the situation experienced by the newcomer Asante Blackk, who plays Richardson and stands out among a distribution of ringtones. Blackk is personified puberty, with the face of a ceramic cherub and an incredibly human voice, making it the best ship for a story about children forced into adulthood by their circumstances.

After the first arrests, DuVernay focuses on each phase of the boy's experiences in the criminal justice system and returns to the territory that he had previously explored in his documentary on mass incarceration. 13th. Each episode shows more and more clearly that if DuVernay had been able to communicate more by only using close-ups of the main actors, she would have done so. The four-part structure and special attention to the boys is good for the story, but it often means that the impressive actors move before they can make a good impression. Blair Underwood and Joshua Jackson, to name only two, are part of the boys ragtag legal team, but they do not have much to say, which is probably for the best of luck given the little impact that they ultimately had on their customers. destinies.

This is certainly not the case with Jharrel Jerome, better known for his role in Moonlight, who gets the biggest spotlight here as Wise, whose bow represents the cruelest twist in a full plot. Jerome is the only actor to have portrayed his character as child and adult. The last installment of this feature is almost entirely a showcase of his performance. As beautiful and well made as When they see us Indeed, the nature of the story gives the show the taste of medicine, and one could forgive to stop after the first episode because of emotional exhaustion. But if there was one episode to watch, it would be the last one, which describes Wise's horrible journey as the only one of the five boys to be sent to an adult prison. Jerome's performance is absolutely beautiful and rich in detail, going as far as his choice to reproduce Wise's tight oral posture.

At the end of the tunnel, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, of course, the post-scripted justification of the men after the revelation of the culprit and the DNA evidence exonerated of Wise, McCray, Richardson, Salaam and Santana, leading to a settlement several million dollars from the city. But man, it's a tunnel hell. When they see us DuVernay is at its best: urgent, inflexible and political. But like 13th Previously, it was a tedious viewing experience, an experience that probably benefits from burst viewing, but makes it almost impossible.

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