Film fans are caught between two warring camps whenever Oscar season rolls around. In one corner, we have the people who remain mesmerised by the Academy’s glitz, and in the other, stands the “Oscars are irrelevant/dull/anti-art/meaningless” crowd. I am not interested in picking a side (partly because my own opinion is a cowardly diplomatic one: I can see both perspectives) but I do know for sure that celebrating art matters.
Because art itself matters, maybe more than anything else.
When the planned expanded theatrical release for Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing didn’t materialise, we all lost. Audiences missed out on a rapturously moving cinematic experience. The filmmakers missed out on a revenue stream. And the talented artists involved missed out on further acclaim from the peers (the film did receive three Oscar nominations, winning none).
It is perhaps apposite, given the full-nelson cruelty has on the planet at the moment, that a film celebrating the redemptive apotheosis of art received muted celebration itself.
If anything, this situation brings to mind a moment in the second half of the film. Divine G (Colman Domingo, wow), a wrongfully convicted man, sits before a parole hearing board and speaks about the incredible effect the titular prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program has had. We watch him struggle — and occasionally fail — to maintain his composure as he speaks about the transformative impact he has both witnessed and experienced as one of the program’s long-time participating inmates.
It is heartbreaking and delightful.
But he is met with suspicion: “Couldn’t you be using your acting skills to fool us right now?” one member of the hearing board asks. And that moment captures so much.
Art is available as a balm to us all but some people refuse to see it and, as such, look askance at anyone else who does.
Those two forces are present in Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin. I must note that the film is based on two non-fiction books, so many former inmates who actually participated in the RTA program play themselves. Maclin is one of them and his performance is earth-shattering. His character begins the film as an aggressive, rough-around-the-edges inmate, sceptical of the program’s efficacy. He is reluctant to give himself fully and move past the behaviours he has formed in response to the dehumanisation of the prison yard.
Art is available as a balm to us all but some people refuse to see it and, as such, look askance at anyone else who does
A delicate, well-observed tension between him and Divine G is introduced when the former gets the role in the RTA’s next production that the latter auditioned for.
This tension underscores a lot of the subsequent drama but the film also quickly allows a friendship develop between the two. Their push-and-pull is intoxicating, especially given that their circumstances necessitate trips and falls.
They are in a place designed to keep men like them from getting out alive.
The fall, when it comes, takes the form of a virtuoso role reversal. Maclin receives good news that the parole board has agreed to let him go home early. Divine G, on the other hand, has had his appeal denied, despite the fact that he has evidence that indicates his probable innocence (a recording of another man confessing to the crime he was accused of!).
When Divine G breaks down during the production’s dress rehearsal, it is like an underwater bullet. When he turns on Maclin it is like a slap in the rain.
It is laid bare that despite the stage, lights and fancy clothes, these are not men at play. They are food in the belly of an apex predator.
The digestive process will strip them of their nutrients, their essence. It is painful to watch.
And yes, the film ends on a beautiful note. The two men driving away from the prison with hope in their eyes transitions into footage of actual RTA performances.
It is stirring. But you can’t shake what you’ve just seen. In art, these men were able to become people yes, but shouldn’t they always have been?
Art is a wonderful way to find humanity but humanity should not be something one needs to go searching for; it should be freely given by everyone to everyone else. Always.