Capturing the Friedmans

The Friedmans are your stereotypical aspirational middle-American family with a mum, a dad and three brothers. Arnold is the dad: a pillar of the local community and music teacher; Elaine is the stay-at-home mother and Sam, David and Jesse are their children. They have a spacious home and are keen on making home movies to celebrate just about any occasion. Then their world comes apart at the seams. The authorities are informed that Arnold has been receiving some dodgy Dutch pornographic magazines and so after the gentlest of sting operations arrest him. He admits his misdemeanour, but it turns out that this is just the tip of an iceberg that indicates he has not stopped at just looking at photos but that he has been abusing his position of trust to actually assault some of the kids in his charge. Moreover, as the investigation gathers pace it appears that his teenage son Jesse has been complicit all along. What director Andrew Jarecki proceds to do now is follow the legal process, but rather than just present us with a straightforward chronology he starts to explore what actually happened in this case - and there is more than one permutation. From the interviews with the brothers, and with Elaine, we learn that though outwardly happy this was a dysfunctional family where husband and wife's relationship had all but dissolved. The two brothers who remained untouched by the allegations struggle to believe that their brother could be involved in such things, and their mother seems oddly detached from the entire proceedings - especially as it appears there is little love lost between her and her older sons. Obviously, as the case attracts media attention other families come forward and with the accumulating evidence looking more and more convincing, the trial looks like it's going to be a bit of a slam dunk. It's at this point that we start to head off on quite interesting and controversial tangents and thanks to the input of psychiatrists and lawyers, questions are aske...