Capturing the Friedmans

Somehow, documentaries have managed to become this decade's heist movies. Just when you think we're all truth-ed out, another piece of cinematic verisimilitude rears its ugly head and suddenly articles are being written in the broadsheets, the chattering classes are queuing round the block and pub conversation is rife with "did it really happen" discussions.

And, if any film is guaranteed to get chins wagging and brains ticking over, it's Capturing the Friedmans. Its subject matter – the purported systematic and repulsive abuse of children within the confines of non-threatening American suburbia is enough in itself. But added to that the fact that the family in question actually videotaped each other throughout their entire ordeal, pre-trial, during trial and post-trial, then suddenly there seems to be a whole lot of potential evidence for the perusal. And this film is like the Friedmans' Trial, Take 2, and we are the jury.

Testimony from children (now grown up) is heard, relating to their alleged assault in the basement of the Friedman house by Arnold Friedman and his youngest son, Jesse. Interviews with police, officials and experts reveal astounding lapses in knowledge and outrageous misjudgements on the part of the prosecution. And all the while, we are subjected to home video footage of a family falling apart under the pressure of its own infamy as the case speeds out of control.

Eschewing the sanctimonious, one-sided hack-job style favoured by fat American self-publicist Michael Moore, director Andrew Jarecki assembles a carefully balanced, ambiguous film which refuses easy answers and confounds notions of an easy "truth" (Arnold Friedman is undoubtedly disturbed, but just how disturbed?). It's powerful, explicit and uneasy viewing, but the questions it raises are as important now as at any other point in our history. What do we believe, and what, if anything, can we really trust?

Greg Taylor