Andrew Jarecki
Una Storia Americana

A (unfortunately) boundary-less story.

There exists an ability of cinematic art to surpass reality itself and become more representative than reality itself. It is not very common, but sometimes it can happen.
By stripping away any stylistic embellishment or screenplay, the young Andrew Jarecki, with this film simply titled “An American Story,” created a verité documentary that is astonishing in its intent and truly commendable for its result: practically 90% of the film is made with original material shot by members and friends of the Friedman family, protagonists in spite of themselves, of the events narrated here.

Super8 clips, scenes shot with shoddy 16mm, and others shot semi-professionally documenting for the first time in cinema history, scenes of real life, family snapshots, and acts of brutality of a “normal American family” whose father in 1984 committed one of the most heinous crimes ever conceived by the human mind: the abuse and rape of hundreds of innocent children between the ages of 6 and 11.
Arnold and Elaine Friedman, with their sons Jesse, David, and Seth, were, in fact, investigated for molestation and sexual abuse of many children, unleashing a true media storm with an interminable trial that lasted almost 6 years (from 1984 to ’90) with prohibitive legal costs for the American State. The accusations then focused on the father, the elderly teacher Arnold Friedman, an upright computer science teacher, and on his son Jesse who helped him in the abuses during the terrible lessons.

The film reconstructs the TRUE story of the family using, I repeat, clips of family films, birthday parties, mountain trips, and whatnot (shot by Arnold himself or his sons), reconstructing first the normal life of an apparently bourgeois and traditional family and then, over time, the scenes of the accusation, the arrest live on camera, the fierce defense by the wife, and the interviews with the sons, friends, and parents of the abused children.
The film is a continuous investigation into the psychological and mental aspects of the elderly teacher who presents himself here with an impassive mask of reserve and embarrassingly naive candor, which the director tries to portray not with personal opinions or journalistic distortions (as his more famous colleague Michael Moore did with the film Fahrenheit 9/11) but through a cold and aseptic representation of facts as chronologically told to us by original documents: Interviews, accusations by the sons, embarrassing contradictions, scenes of collective hysteria, attempts to dodge the charges and even moments of cheerful irresponsibility (like the son outside the courthouse, filmed by his brother, mimicking exaggerated sexual acts, unaware of being spied on by the judge at the window).

A ruthless film in its cold description of the facts, gruesome in representing everyday life (embarrassing the family scenes celebrating Passover) and atrocious as it gradually takes us into the spiral of perversion of a father, until recently considered a “model father” by the entire community.
Andrew Jarecki received an Oscar nomination in 2004 for Best Documentary with this documentary and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival that year and numerous other awards.

A film that is a punch in the stomach but has much to say about many cases of “alleged normality” present even in our families, without having to disturb America too much and without going too far regarding our own local events, see the events in Rignano Flaminio near Rome or the many cases that daily go almost unnoticed by various national media (see news here or here, just to take two fairly current examples).