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Reviews Counted:143
Fresh:139
Rotten:4
Average Rating:8.4/10
Consensus: A haunting depiction of a disintegrating family, and a powerful argument on the elusiveness of truth.
Theatrical Release:May 30, 2003 Limited
Box Office: $2,794,120
Synopsis: Watching Andrew Jarecki's riveting non-fiction drama is like watching a slow-motion replay of a multi-car pileup; you know it's headed for disaster, but there's no way you can stop watching. On the... [More]
Starring: Arnold Friedman, David Friedman, Elaine Friedman, Seth Friedman
Director: Andrew Jarecki
In some respects, Jarecki just scratches the surface of the material, and the film is often coy and withholding. Yet it's also riveting and so suggestive that you can't consume it passively: You have to brood on it.
Disturbing and deleterious cinema.
Leo Tolstoy wrote that 'every unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion,' but not even he could have invented the Friedmans.
Top CriticContrived and movieish.
**** masterpiece
As absorbing as its subject is difficult.
A document that, much like the denial-stricken members of the Friedman clan, seems to have become so clouded by bias that it refuses to look for the truths in front of it.
Andrew Jarecki could have done more to lay out the marriage of sexual and religious and social hysteria that made cases like this possible. But he deserves credit for having the guts to say, in this case and in so many like it, who suffered the most.
This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal.
Top CriticManages to be a mystery, a thriller and a family melodrama, all rolled into one well-made and exceedingly disturbing documentary.
By the end of this excellent film, you may find yourself admitting you know less about its subjects than when you started.
Top CriticA remarkable and shattering documentary.
Top CriticWhen a community put a family under suspicion, they put themselves on-camera -- and this documentary shows it all.
Jarecki's deft organization of the factual material provides the momentum for a never-flagging exposition of the complexities of the Friedman case
Jarecki lets the audience decipher the story through the Friedmans themselves, specifically via incredible and personal home movies (seen here for the first time).
For certain, things are never black or white, always gray. Yet after viewing this film, one is persuaded that even gray has many shades and hues.
Top CriticNever less than gripping.
Engagingly evenhanded and intelligently assembled first feature.
Top CriticA compulsively watchable movie that's also a provocative inquiry into the ability of the criminal-justice system to determine culpability and truth.
Jarecki has taken an impossible subject, and subjects, and made a movie that works as crime thriller, social document and, occasionally, surrealist comedy.
Top Critic
July 26, 2006:
Magnolia Digs Into the Crayon Box
You probably know Magnolia Pictures as the distributor of foreign/arthouse fare like "District B13," "Bubble," and "Capturing the Friedmans" -- but... More...
September 10, 2003:
Andrew Jarecki's first go is golden. 
More...
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