150 Word Review: 'Sing Sing' (2024)
All the world's a cage
Prison movies are a durable genre: if there's one thing Americans love more than building prisons, it's watching movies about people suffering behind bars. These flicks are part misery porn, part escape fantasy.
In director Greg Kwedar's moving drama Sing Sing, a group of inmates—some played by actual ex-cons—finds freedom while rehearsing a play. Sing Sing subverts familiar jailhouse tropes: there is no violence or sadistic guard, but there is despair.
Colman Domingo claws open his heart as Divine G, an inmate incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. His performance aches with hope. His character is a founding member of the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, but his faith is tested by a system designed to smother. Clarence Maclin is tremendous as a con hardened by his time until Divine G reaches him with compassion. These men are numbers, but they call each other "beloved."
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Such a good subhead, "All the world's a cage" - Kicking myself for not having thought of it myself...
Twice in my life I was given a private prison tour by a family member working in the Texas prison system. Once right at the beginning of his career and once at the end, decades later, when he was back in the same prison he started in as a junior guard, this time as warden. The prison has (had) a "death row."
Both times I was struck by the oppression and depression of the system.
The inmates standing in a strict line to go to the showers. The inmates stand to the side of the hallway always(!) inside the yellow line designating the distance from the wall they are allowed to exist in. Very few look up or even around. They hold their clothes and toiletries as instructed.
The men in the rec room look away from the TV to study us as we walk by. Particularly on the second trip. I can only imagine what they're thinking. "Who is that guy walking with the warden and his two deputies? Is something going to happen?"
The different cell types. The violent prisoner in chains giving me a death stare as he's lead down a hallway by two guards. Death row. Ad seg. The dining hall. The shops. The yard. The towers. Etc. Etc. It was half prison-movie cliché and half concentration camp documentary. Thoroughly depressing, particularly how that environment changes both the inmates and the guards.