Capturing the Friedmans

Arnold Friedman is an upstanding teacher, who has garnered many awards in his field, a father to three sons, and the head of a seemingly happy family and household, who also teaches piano & computer lessons to young children & teenagers in Great Neck, NY. When he is arrested & brought up on charges of pediphilia, The Friedman family's normal life descends into a nightmarish hell as family members take sides as to whether Arnold is guilty or innocent (the mother, Elaine, despises Arnold keeping his dark secret from her for all these years, while the boys stand behind there dad). The police, obsessed with bringing the elder Friedman to justice, interview all the children that attended the piano & computer classes, and some not all (and under the coaxing of the police and, worst yet, through hypnosis) admit to some form of pediphiliac action taken against them. It gets worse when during some of the interviews Friedman's youngest son, Jesse, pops up supposedly helping his father in some of the acts. The police promptly arrest Jesse and bring him up on charges, also. The media, of course, does not help matters when accusations & allegations are blown out of proportion as the family, as a whole, disintegrates quickly. The outcome is mind blowing to say the least & a great misjustice to a family that should have gotten a fair trial.

Through video, taken by the Friedman's oldest son to document the entire tragedy in hopes of people seeing the true side of this case, & stock footage of the family in happier times, the viewer is hurled into a video collage of a family that once might have been a stand out in the community to a family that is all but a memory housed on VHS tapes, 8mm film & long forgotten photos. The family's demise is a tragic & sad feeling. I got a small knot in my stomach watching this film.

The final question still remains - who is to blame?

There are three factors.

first off, Arnold Friedman because even though he was into pediphilia, he should have had the responsibility to put him being a father figure & teacher first & foremost over anything else, including his secret stash of kiddie porn. Didn't he realize that if he got caught w/ this trash he was looking at jail time? As for his son Jesse, he should have pleaded innocent. The trial may have lasted a few more years, but, in the long run he would have been, possibly, an innocent man.

The police & the Feds should have had a lot more restraint & over all, discreet class over this case. For the case to turn into a circus and free for all is a shame & to grill the children the way they did during the interview, and coming up with no substantial evidence other than the stack of hidden kiddie porn is the classic paranoid case of going above the law & also a classic case of mis-justice (the bonus materials on the second disc are not to be missed).

The parents of the so called victims. After the case broke, in the media and the surrounding area, the parents got together to console one another & attend group therapy. But, how can the children be called victims, when those same parents would pick there son or daughter from whatever class they attended with no bruises, physical scarring of any kind, no tears shed and clothes that were unsoiled and untorn? Even with that said, wouldn't the child come forward to the parent saying that he or she didn't want to go to the class anymore? One of the kids that confessed to being abused & was hypnotized, comes off on screen like the average punk & I didn't believe a word he said. He seemed like the one that needed the most theraputic help out of everyone in the movie!

If he had given up on his dark hobby, I feel that Arnold Friedman would still be happily married, living in Great Neck, New York, living a happy retirement. Sadly, its only a "what if" question.

Capturing the Friedmans is the kind of story that would be impossible to write as fiction. It documents on-screen a conspiracy to accuse and imprison a man without evidence, on the sole basis of pornographic magazines. It gives us home videos of the family while all this is going on, a family that is deteriorating. It gives us villains that spill the beans to us, as bumbling than a space age tyrant (what else should we think of a judge who says "I knew he was guilty before even hearing the case" ?)

The story, ostensibly, concerns the case of one Arnold Friedman, a respected and honoured retired teacher who teaches computer class in the basement of his home, and his wife and three boys. The police finds out that he mailed someone to receive an illegal pornographic magazine. They eventually manage to nail him to rights and investigate his house, finding a pile of child pornography.

This is not the end, however. Using deceptive interrogation techniques (as is so common in such cases), the police gets dozens of kids to testify that they have been molested by Arnold. His youngest son Jesse is also accused. Both are accused of sodomizing more than twenty boys in the basement.

There is such a contrast between the human, sometimes quarreling, Friedmans, and the callous rationalizations of their accusers, that it is hard not to take sides for the family. Furthermore, the evidence is incredibly flimzy : for one thing, we are supposed to believe that boys were getting bloodied in the basement, and no parent ever found out about it for years before the accusations. We even have the audio of one of the police "interrogations", which are a combination of suggestion and intimidation.

It is hard not to see this movie as anything but a powerful indictment of the justice system, and social dynamics in general. Child abuse scares of all stripes are typified here : the witch-hunt atmosphere, the social prejudice, the trumpeted charges. Unfortunately, like most witch-hunts, it does not have a happy ending. A powerful testimony to the suffering of the common man against the system.