Sing Sing
When you see the recap of “Sing Sing”, you would probably think that this is a movie that has been made before. It’s a drama with Colman Domingo, one of the many men exterminating their sins in the prison served by the participation in the awaiting this theater arts program as well as the improving men. It ends on what a studio boss might call an “up note.”
But it doesn’t have the flow and the pacing of any other prison movie, or a movie about theater students, I have come across, and it is dedicated to the truth that the characters -and the life itself is beautiful in all its glorious mess and imperfections, and that is all there is to it.
Writer-director Greg Kwedar and his script partner Clint Bentley created the project out after the acquisition of the rights to a John H. Richardson Esquire article titled “The Sing Sing Follies” published in 2005. But they didn’t just add a Hollywood throw blanket over a true story. They did what good reporters are trained to do and reconstructed the narrative by talking to various participants in the play and including the background actors in the singularity program in the Sing Sing correctional facility.
And then the crowning touch they let the cats out of their Pandora’s box and they finished the film in a way, which is easy, snappy, and fluid (never dragging) allowing the situations, particularly the drama club’s, to unfold as they ought to.
There are participants who rehearse, discuss the meaning and structure of a scene, give each other directions on how to deliver the material, and debate how this art is a part of their lives (or vice versa). It is likely in fact feeling a much closer proximity in experience to that of an english realist “mike leigh” or ken loach direction letting a scene or a particular sequence just flow in whatever the most interesting thing happening on screen is and shooting it all which gives the impression as if everything was happening in the scene spontaneously. The film crew tries to make the most beautiful shot without losing the speed of the action like the nypd.
Domingo is ‘Divine G’ in real life, one of the millions of real persons who participated in the program. He was an actor and had dreams of becoming a playwriter back in school before things went haywire for him. He gives the same energy to performing and reading plays and drama as a person who has discovered faith amidst troubling times including incarceration. Some of the most vivid and striking scenes of “Sing Sing’ include close ups of Domingo’s face when Divine G performs, thinks, and even just watches people.
The prison is a barren, merciless compound characterized by wicked men whose mission each day is to make life bearable in terms of not provoking either the powerful inmates or the omnipresent guards. There doesn’t seem to be any rationale behind discipline punishment. Whenever ‘cells have to be checked’ this is done by the officers in a senseless throwing around of already set mattresses, which appears to be more to terrify than look for anything prohibited.
The theater program is an outlet from all that. “We’re here to be human again,” one of the participants puts it succinctly. Also, this is a space where it is possible to illustrate how art can be inspirational just by a group of actors doing their thing.
It is hard to forget Paul Raci as the hero’s mentor in ‘The Sound Of Metal’; he gives a calm and understated performance yet commanding as the group leader who has to manage the opposing heads of the group every week. He is, in fact, quite insensed the film leaves it unspoken, he appears to be the original playwright of the plays presented by the company, however, when there are outside requests for material either his directions of what should be done or more likely both are given.
There is an added element of suspense owing to the fact that Divine Eye is a lively, but controversial, and, at times, hostile newcomer. Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who in real life went to jail for armed robbery and here plays a fictional portrayal of himself which is not difficult to imagine. However, this perhaps, is due to the fact that this sophomore film is teasing upon a mutual contest between two Divines, for like two Lolas competing for Gigi, perhaps an ‘All About Eve’ type plot, with a theatre group being the platform of war over jealousy and deceit.
However, as in other instances, Sing Sing does not take the road that has already been overrun. Divine G is, to me a fundamentally nice person with regular fears (the panic in the character’s eyes at the idea of being pushed aside by some newcomer sahe lovessss is exquisitely portrayed). He’s capable of that level of self control and confidence at the right moment so that he won’t just sit there and let himself get riled by present circumstances and lose himself, but instead, focus on the bigger picture and be the best version of himself and change a bad situation into a good one. The interdependence between these two actors throughout the film, is the unproclaimed structure of the movie and the resolution of it is so succinct much like older movies of Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder.
Bear in mind that “Sing Sing” is a limited and localized film for a reason; it is unlikely to be showing at every multiplex. Still, you should try to watch it with an audience if you can, because rather paradoxically, one of the goals of the movie is to re-establish this very experience. There is that moment when the audience understands what the story is about or at least they feel that there is a reason for it having been previously established, usually a few moments after it has settled on that particular storyline because it is quite clever in this respect. Then there are points where the film appears to have jumped the shark, only to gain clarity as to why such a plot device cannot possibly work because it would actually pull down the entire structure.
Mostly thanks to this picture, “Sing Sing,” I understood and understood a lot about the cinema world, the theater and the art in general. The longer you sit down, the more everything is extraordinary, both what it is and what it does.
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