Cinema as evidence – Weekend – Kommersant

When director Joe Berlinger, author of the cult documentary trilogy Paradise Lost, is hailed as a pioneer of the detective documentary genre, the true crime genre, he is upset: he considers himself a “social justice filmmaker.” While True Crime focuses on entertaining the public, Berlinger has always been interested in the fuller and tougher picture.

Text: Xenia Rozhdestvenskaya

Nevertheless, without Paradise Lost there would be no detective documentary as we know it today.

This is a film about a criminal case that lasted almost twenty years. Books have been written about him, fiction and non-fiction films have been made (including Atom Egoyan’s The Devil’s Knot), and they continue to study him in almost all US law schools. Paradise Lost is still the highest rated documentary on HBO. Without this trilogy, the West Memphis Trinity case would have long been forgotten, and the main characters would most likely be dead by now.

Kill ’em All*

In May 1993, three eight-year-old children were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. Teenage friends Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelly were accused of the crime. The police were sure that they worshiped Satan and committed a ritual murder. Arkansas is an extremely religious state, where the “satanic panic” was especially strong in the early 1990s. Televangelists used the word “Satan” almost more often than the word “God”, and all the most terrible crimes were attributed to Satanists.

Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelly really seemed like the perfect suspects, straight out of a courtroom drama or thriller: one is smart, one is quiet, and the other is a village fool. The smart one always wore black and was interested in white magic, the quiet one looked at the smart one with reverence, and when the third one was arrested, he could not stand the twelve-hour interrogation and told the police “at least something” about the murder of children so that they would get rid of him. Because of this confession, all three went to prison: two for life, one was sentenced to death. After 18 years, they came out – and only because the HBO channel in 1993 decided to make a film about satanic cults and about “children who killed children.” HBO just wanted to find the rating history.

Young directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky arrived in West Memphis, firmly believing that the killers were under investigation. Every day the newspapers said that the “West Memphis Trinity” was guilty, every day the TV said they were Satanists and murderers, the coroner said it was obvious. The documentarians had no reason not to believe the press. But then it began to turn out that the investigation was somehow not very good with the evidence, the town was flooded with strange people screaming about retribution and the need to kill, and the alleged criminals themselves were confused teenagers, one of whom, moreover, with an IQ of 72 – that is, a little lower than Forrest Gump. The reason for their arrest was that Damien Echols wore black and listened to Metallica. Later, already under investigation, he will say to the camera: “People are always trying to destroy what they do not understand.”

Berlinger and Sinofsky worked with the great Maysles brothers (Traveling Salesman, Gray Gardens) and, in general, filmed in approximately the same style: they were interested in cinema verite, direct cinema, that is, observing events without interfering with their course. In West Memphis, they interviewed the defendants, their parents and the victims’ parents, attended hearings, and interacted with lawyers. They filmed the entire trial, which ended with a wild verdict: Jason and Jesse were sent to prison for life, Damien, as the alleged leader, was waiting for the death penalty.

Instead of editing a social report about teenage Satanists or a court drama, the authors made an excuse film: these three are innocent. Dot. This conclusion acted so strongly because the authors immediately plunged the viewer into a nightmare. During editing, Berlinger and Sinofsky discussed whether it is ethical to start the film with monstrous shots of murdered children. “We decided that the viewer should immediately fall into this world of shock and horror, go the way that we went.”

But, in essence, there were no special tricks in Paradise Lost, almost no cunning editing that pushes the viewer to the right conclusions, and the Metallica songs that sound in the film can be considered off-screen commentary. This, by the way, was the first time the band had licensed the use of their songs in a movie. In 2004, Berlinger and Sinofsky made the film Metallica.

The authors addressed the audience as a court, and this was the meaning of Paradise Lost. If the great “Thin Blue Line” (1988) by Errol Morris, which also tells about the innocently convicted, was based not only on interviews with the heroes, but primarily on the reconstruction of events, painting the documentary in dark shades of noir, then “Paradise Lost” did not use no formalities. Photos and footage from the scene of the murder were given as is, no brutal details were cut from conversations with residents of West Memphis.

The only one who in the first film seemed to be a fiction, a character from some category B thriller, was the stepfather of one of the murdered boys, Mark Byers. He gave such a speech, savored the details of the murders so triumphantly, told what he would do with the graves of teenagers, shot pumpkins with such delight, naming them the names of the trinity (“I think old Jesse is still moving … come on, finish old Jesse” ) that it was impossible not to suspect him. Obviously, the filmmakers also thought that he was somehow involved in the murder. In the sequel, almost everyone talked about it.

ReLoad

The first Paradise Lost came out just as the “let’s watch the lawsuit” genre began to gain popularity: detective journalism TV channels had already appeared, the trial of O. J. Simpson had just passed, which was watched by the whole country. Berlinger himself believed that neither The Thin Blue Line nor their film could count the fashion for true crime, and the interest in this genre is rooted in human nature and is associated with the victim’s interest in the predator. The viewer, realizing that he could become a victim of a maniac from another detective, triumphs: “You didn’t catch me, you caught someone else.”

In Paradise Lost, the judiciary is the predator.

The film became a sensation at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. The top film critic of all time, Roger Ebert, gave him the highest rating and said that the court could not convince him of the guilt of the “West Memphis trio”. Paradise Lost won a bunch of prizes, including an Emmy Award, and it became a torment for the authors: their heroes were still in prison, and Damien was preparing for the death penalty. So they decided to make films about the West Memphis Trinity until their heroes were released. Years later, they admitted, “We didn’t think it would be that long… or that difficult.”

After the release of Paradise Lost, an all-American trio support group spontaneously arose – that is, in fact, the fans of the first film united and began to investigate themselves. They went to a forensic expert and got an analysis of the evidence. It turned out that in 1993 the police and the court missed the bite marks on the body of the victim, and this became the reason for the retrial.

When Berlinger and Sinofsky returned to West Memphis, it turned out that they were hated there no less than the “West Memphis trinity”: the inhabitants of the city did not like that in the first film the Arkansans looked like crazy rednecks.

The film crew was no longer allowed into the courtroom, so the heroes of the second film were, on the one hand, the community of support for three prisoners, and on the other, Mark Byers. Since the release of the first film, Mark has broken the law several times and his wife has died of “unspecified causes”. And now the inhabitants of the city no longer suspect him, almost no one doubts his guilt. Everyone demands that he be interrogated on a lie detector, and the authors of Paradise Lost are also apparently sure of his guilt.

Revisiting his films, Berlinger is horrified by what they put Mark through. In essence, they did the same as those who planted the trinity: from the point of view of the directors, Mark both looked and behaved very strange. Damien wore black, listened to Metallica and knew who Aleister Crowley was. Mark wore American flag shirts, sang in church and loved knives.

The very plot of the trilogy was proof that people should not be approached with prejudice, no matter how strange they behave. In the third part of the film, filmed in 2009, Mark becomes one of the main fans of the trio: “It was very hard for me to admit that I was wrong,” he says. In the third part, everyone admits their mistakes – everyone except the judiciary itself.

They were able to release the trinity only after an agreement that they would admit their guilt. Fighting for their release were Peter Jackson (he later produced another documentary about the case, West of Memphis), Johnny Depp, Trey Parker, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, Tom Waits, Ozzy Osbourne. But why, asks Berlinger, does it take three HBO documentaries and celebrity money like Johnny Depp and Peter Jackson to give the West Memphis trio the legal protection they deserved in 1993? What was the state of Arkansas thinking when it didn’t doubt the crime of Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelly, but let them go free only because celebrities stood up for them?

Berlinger and Sinofsky refused to film the trio after they got out of prison: their job was to help investigate the case, and another film wouldn’t help the investigation.

…and Justice for All

“Direct cinema” did not work out: “Paradise Lost” by its very existence changed the course of things. In the third film, Damien says, “We were just beggars, miserable scum. I’m sure if this story hadn’t been caught on camera, I’d be dead already.”

Paradise Lost became one of the most important documentaries in the history of cinema, primarily because the authors were not interested in the investigation, they did not seek to portray the American South, the justice system or misguided teenagers. They were interested in justice. “We are dealing with the truth. We are making documentaries,” said Berlinger.

Since then, he has directed more than one true crime project – two films about Ted Bundy, and several episodes of the series Crime Scene Investigation. He is sure that the documentary detective genre is now so popular because the viewer sees that cinema can influence the course of a case. And yet he believes that this genre is increasingly slipping into the entertainment of the public.

His requirements for true crime are very simple: the film must contain some commentary on the state of society, the idea of ​​social justice. It’s not enough to just show the crime and savor the sinister details for a long time in order to tickle someone’s nerves, you need to study the bigger picture.

Despite the fact that Berlinger does not like the title of true crime pioneer, the Paradise Lost trilogy, along with Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line, really stands at the origins of detective documentary. Without these films, there would have been no Oscar-winning Sunday Morning Murder (2001) by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and his cult Stairs (2004), or Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi’s series Creating a Killer (2015). Not a dozen other documentaries and series questioning the conclusions of the police and the judiciary. The trilogy also influenced feature films: for example, some details of the West Memphis Trinity case got into the plot of the third season of True Detective.

There are several heroes in Paradise Lost, and one of the main characters is the cinema itself, the cinema as an observer and as the main witness of the defense. By the way, the first film of the trilogy was used in court as material evidence during appeals.

The second hero is the press, a video picture, manipulation of the truth. The viewer believes what he is told every day on TV and in the press, and it is very difficult for him to shake himself off and try to think independently and without prejudice. As a result, he is ready to persecute anyone they say – for example, Satanists, ready to skin them, shoot them and spit on their graves. So, already, in essence, he is ready to declare a Satanist anyone who does not like him.

The third hero is self-organization, the union of different people who strive for the same thing – horizontal connections.

And the main character is justice. Justice for all.

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