Ava DuVernay's bruising Central Park Five series is an elegant elegy to young lives lost to the system
TV Reviews When They See Us
If the heart-rending saga of the Central Park Five didn’t exist, Dick Wolf would have had to invent it. After all, the case of five black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping and beating a white woman is exactly the kind of thorny, politically fraught story on which Wolf’s iconic Law & Order franchise was built. Even three decades after the attack and its aftermath, it’s not uncommon to hear a Special Victims Unit detective make a sidelong reference to the case or the many lessons it imparted. From the risks of coercive interrogation to the dangers of a ravenous media response, the Central Park Five have served as a totem for systemic failure long after their official exoneration.
Director Ava DuVernay isn’t content for the story of the Central Park Five to exist as a law enforcement case study, or for the public to only know the men by their reductive sobriquet. When They See Us, DuVernay’s furious and infuriating four-part Netflix series, maintains a disciplined focus on the men involved, showing how their lives and communities suffered irreparable damage as a result of their incarceration after confessing under extreme duress. The ground-level approach lies in stark contrast with that of co-director Ken Burns’ non-fiction take on the same material, which concerns itself more with the procedural errors and how growing anxiety about metropolitan crime created a bloodthirsty mob.
Those elements of the story are well-represented in DuVernay’s scripted version, but only as much as they’re required to recount the awful facts. One night, in April of 1989, five Harlem boys—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise—literally fall in with a bad crowd. Each kid follows a large, disparate group of young black men into Central Park, only to watch in horror as the mob’s idle hands make fists and pummel random passersby. The police arrive to stop the crowd from escalating its violent behavior, and the five boys who eventually take the fall get swept up in the NYPD’s broad net. Unbeknownst to the boys, who were mostly strangers prior to that night, a 28-year-old jogger had been dragged off a Central Park trail, raped, and beaten within inches of her life.
The jogger’s attack doesn’t seem to fit with the other crimes, in terms of time, space, and physical evidence, and the boys are initially confused when their interrogations turn toward a rape they know nothing about. But that doesn’t stop city prosecutor Linda Fairstein (Felicity Huffman) from prodding detectives to garner confessions by any means necessary, with widespread public outrage curdling into top-down political pressure and an entire city demanding swift justice. That includes pressure from a certain real estate developer who once seemed most likely to inspire the main antagonist in a next-gen Leisure Suit Larry game, but instead became the de facto leader of the free world. The limited series isn’t bashful about calling out the president by name and highlighting how his public push for hang-’em-high justice then is reflected in his policies toward black and brown people now.
The first episode is hardest to watch because it shows in harrowing detail the circumstances that would lead anyone, especially a minor, to admit involvement in a violent crime. It’s one thing to hear a voice in a documentary recalling a 30-hour interrogation without food or sleep, outside the presence of parents or legal representation and often augmented with physical abuse or the threat thereof. But it’s entirely different to watch those events dramatized, to see the terror and confusion of the situation acted by newcomer Asante Blackk, who plays Richardson and distinguishes himself among a cast of ringers. Blackk is puberty personified, with the face of a ceramic cherub and an impossibly mannish voice, making him the best vessel for a story about kids forced into adulthood by their circumstances.
After the initial arrests, DuVernay focuses on each phase of the boy’s experiences coming of age in the criminal justice system, returning to territory she previously explored in her mass incarceration documentary 13th. Each episode makes increasingly obvious that if DuVernay could have communicated more using only tight close-ups of the core actors, she would have done so. The four-episode structure and the tight focus on the boys works well for the story, but frequently means the impressive ensemble cast flits in and out before they’re able to make a real impression. Blair Underwood and Joshua Jackson, to name two, show up as part of the boys’ ragtag legal team, but they don’t have much to chew on, which is probably for the best considering how little impact they ultimately had on their clients’ fates.
That’s certainly not the case for Jharrel Jerome, best known for his role in Moonlight, who gets the biggest spotlight here as Wise, whose arc represents the cruelest twist in a plot full of them. Jerome is the only actor to portray his character as a child and as an adult, and the feature-length final installment is almost entirely a showcase for his performance. As handsome and well-rendered as When They See Us is, the nature of the story makes the show taste like medicine, and one could be forgiven for stopping after the first episode on account of sheer emotional exhaustion. But if there was a single episode to watch, it would be the last one, which portrays Wise’s horrifying journey as the only one of the five boys to be sent to an adult prison. Jerome’s performance is absolutely stunning and richly detailed, down to his choice to replicate Wise’s clenched oral posture.
There’s light at the end of the tunnel, of course, the mostly post-scripted vindication of the men after the actual culprit came forward and DNA evidence exculpated Wise, McCray, Richardson, Salaam, and Santana, leading to a multi-million dollar settlement from the city. But man, it’s a hell of a tunnel. When They See Us is DuVernay at her best: urgent, unflinching, and political. But like 13th before it, it’s a gutting viewing experience, one that probably benefits from binge-viewing, but makes doing so nearly impossible.
32 Comments
I was able to watch about half of the first episode this morning before I went to work. It’s utterly heartbreaking to see these 5 boys join the larger group of boys and know what the future holds for them, just how much that split second decision would define their lives to this day. Also striking is just how much the words being used by Fairstein are still used today to describe young black men and boys. So much has changed in 30 years and yet so little at the same time. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the series holds. DuVernay is a real talent.
Do you ever wonder if perhaps the way people describe young black men and boys might be connected with the disproportionate amount of crime they commit? When you have a bunch of people who are responsible for half of the murders in the US, it’s not surprising if people have a less than positive view of them. For example recently five black children including a 12 year old girl!! shot and murdered a musician in Nashville.
Wait, what? Dick Wolf’s L&O series are full of innocent people nearly hounded to death by eager cops, without a single word of remorse when the guilty is finally found.
It’s all in the service of ‘getting the scum off the streets’. It’s EXACTLY the mentality that resulted in real life cases like the Central Park Five.
Thank you! Law and Order is an incredibly addictive, watchable show with a perfect formula. But that’s where the positives end. Like nearly every cop show on TV, except like The Wire, it shows a horribly skewed perspective of the justice system and makes cops out to be heroes. The interrogations on shows like Law and Order or CSI are exactly the type of coercive ones that lead to false confessions. The skirting of the law and procedure and the disdain for legal constraints and defense lawyers all plays into why people give cops so much leeway when misconduct is found. Sure, nationwide, the murder clearance rate is a lot higher than the clearance rate for other crimes, especially in big cities like New York. But when it comes to the vast majority of what cops do? The overall clearance rate for New York Q4 2018 was 32%. One of the least cleared categories of crime is, unsurprisingly, forcible rape, which puts a big question mark on how much good Olivia Benson and co. are actually doing. Never mind the absolute absurdity of calling a show Chicago PD and depicting that force for anything but the scum they are. This is an organization that tortured people for years and still keeps those people around. They ran a black site prison in the past fucking decade. You can’t make a show valorizing them without ignoring the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Here’s my source on the clearance rates. Mind you, NYC is one of the safest cities of its size in the country, so most places aren’t seeing these numbers:https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/clearance.page
Thank you!The only cop shows I watch anymore are B99, Elementary or have supernatural elements, .Other cops shows want to pretend all cops are decent, law-abiding and never, ever make mistakes and that’s bullshit!
Try watching The Shield
I’m just really curious if a certain would-be President is mentioned.
“The limited series isn’t bashful about calling out the president by name and highlighting how his public push for hang-’em-high justice then is reflected in his policies toward black and brown people now.”
Just not, you know, curious enough to read the article.
I scanned the article and didn’t see the word “Trump”, but it seems that yes, the fucking piece of shit is mentioned in the series.
I was led to expect to see the ad, and maybe see some interviews that shithead did during the time, but DuVernay also included a less-than-glowing discussion of Trump by the kids’ mothers, one of whom was horrified that he was calling for her son’s death.
They showed the interview he gave as well.
The central park five committed several attacks, assaults, and robberies in the northernmost part of the park. they attacked several bicyclists, hurled rocks at a cab, and attacked a man who was walking, whom they knocked to the ground, assaulted, robbed, and left unconscious. A schoolteacher out for a run was severely beaten and kicked then, they attacked another jogger, hitting him in the back of the head with a pipe and stick. They pummeled two men into unconsciousness, hitting them with a metal pipe, stones, and punches, and kicking them in the head. Kevin Richardson said in the back of a police car that he didn’t commit the murder and that it was Antron McCray. Raymond Santana stated “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel her tits.”The Armstrong report concluded that the five knew too many details about the rape not to be involved. The police should have done a better job because these animals are walking free with money in their pockets. so sad.
Trump wrote an op-ed after the city settled with the five calling it “outrageous” and a “travesty”, and when he’s asked about it today he still insinuates they were guilty. Just in case you’d forgotten for a few minutes what an utterly horrific and irredeemable piece of shit he is. Happy Friday!
He went beyond writing an op-ed, he took out full-page ads in four newspapers across the city.
Yes, I know. The ads were taken out after the crime had just happened. The op-ed was written after they were exonerated, released, and the city had admitted they fucked up by settling with them financially. He was essentially saying, and still saying today, that he doesn’t give a shit that all reasonable signs point to their innocence and even the justice system has admitted they got it wrong, which is nothing short of a miracle in wrongful conviction cases. He still thinks they did it, because reasons. (“They’re brown” and also “I can never admit to being wrong about anything ever because my ego contains toxic levels of narcissism”.)
He has also said that even if they didn’t do it, they were in the park generally assaulting folks willy-nilly (you know, “wilding”) so they are bad men anyway. Which is absurd even if true, but no such charges were pressed and no such allegations/admissions were ever made. He just decided it.Great leader. Real presidential material!
I’m going to correct myself here. Apparently some of it was true but I stand by how absurd it is. Kids aren’t supposed to spend a decade in prison for beating someone up.
I heard about it but I’ve never seen it before.You ever hate someone so much your stomach hurts just thinking about them?
Such a lovely man, truly we are lucky for him to be our dear leader. He is in no way a racist at all.Man, he really is a racist POS.
Yeah he’s RIGHT! How in the hell are people this stupid? Go watch the hours of testimony if you think one minute of this propaganda from this fat race vulture is true. It’s bullshit. One guy ejaculated. 6 people helped rape and tried themselves to rape but weren’t able to perform. It’s not hard to follow. Amazing how incurious people decide to be when the perpetrators are black. Pathetic. How lowly do you think of blacks?
So it’s a dishonest whitewash then? At least some of those boys absolutely knew what had happened and were involved to a degree. Political drum beating has caused history to swing from one false extreme to the other on this subject.
Felicity Huffman playing a character determined to bend the system to achieve the outcome she desires? That is some uncanny casting.
She was also recently in a show called American Crime.
Yeah, I said in a FB group I’m in discussing the show, with her current legal issues, it almost resembled typecasting for the role…
A fitting punishment for Huffman would be she can continue to act, but only playing harpies who destroy the lives of others to fulfill their own selfish aims.
Although Huffman basically personified clueless white privilege in her numerous seasons on John Ridley’s American Crime,she takes it over the top here. Good acting, but really bad timing for her.
Arguably the strangest twist in this whole mess is thatthey were exonerated due to Wise running across the real perpetrator in prison who was already serving a life sentence. When he saw Wise, and saw what incarceration (10 years I believe at that point) had done to him, he couldn’t get it out of his head and confessed to the chaplain. A serial rapist had more of a conscience than the NYPD. The sad part is that surprises me far less than it used to.
6 hours ago@Jaydee @Arthur Devline Some of the defendants have repeated their admissions of guilt. Santana testified at a parole hearing in 1994 and he was questioned about the crimes he committed on April 19th, 1989. He admitted that he and his friends planned to go to the park that night to rob and assault people. He stated that about seven or eight friends devised the plan. They were prepared to attack whoever they encountered that night in the park. Santana reiterated that they had let one, a couple, go because the man was with his girlfriend. Santana also admitted to beating a man. He denied only the rape. When McCray went before the parole board in November 1994, he admitted all of his crimes except for the rape of the female jogger. Two of the defendants, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, during interviews conducted by detectives in 2002, admitted their participation in the assaults that did not involve the jogger.
Binged this last nite. Wasn’t intending to but after Ep1 I had to watch to the end. Korey Wise story was brutal and hard to watch, be warned all ye who enter there. I had watched the Burns’ doc and that version of the interrogations and aftermath contrasted with this drama really brings home the lesson of DON’T TALK TO THE PO-LICE. Every one should know this, keep your mouth shut and wait for the legal help, damn they should begin teaching this in school as early as possible. name , date of birth, SSN, address, I want a lawyer. Jebus, how many hours of that shit did those poor kids have to endure? I kept thinking of SERE training and how close this came to that. Looked up the Reid Technique as well after Ep4 too to see how it impacted this story. Brutal drama, hard to watch but necessary. Great TV.
Does DuVernay include a reference to Trump’s lies?
Repeatedly.