Nov. 20--"Luther, 16, was arrested outside his home in the Bronx, NY. He was charged with second degree assault, a felony."
Those words appear on screen at the start of the new documentary "Control," which follows a teenager -- in the wrong place at the wrong time -- who gets swept up into the criminal justice system.
The next thing we see is a group of teenage boys -- a collection of gangly arms and legs crowded into a bedroom -- and they are challenging one another, debating what it is that got Luther scooped up by the police. (The doc screens Sunday courtesy of Chicago Filmmakers.) The story emerges in bits and half-explained statements and it is not exactly clear what happened.
It was a summer night. Late. Luther was in his apartment. There was fighting downstairs in front of the building so he went to see what was going on. A friend of his was involved. "So I went to go check on him. And then we went around the corner ... and then the police came, they pulled up on the curb and they told us to get against the wall."
The scene is confusing as the kids talk through and analyze that night. You're forced to piece things together. Later the film offers up a clear recitation of what happened when Luther was arrested, but for the moment you're kept off balance.
I asked director Chris Bravo (who made the film with Lindsey Schneider) why they decided to keep the specific details of Luther's case so mysterious at the beginning.
"We kept going back to Kafka," Bravo said, referring to the early 20th Century author's skill in capturing the baffling, illogical and nightmarish all at once. (A former Chicagoan now based in New York, Bravo will be at Sunday's screening for a post-show Q)
"My problem with a lot of documentaries about the criminal justice system," Bravo told me, "is that they offer a bird's-eye-view of it. It's somebody coming in, interviewing a bunch of experts and you see the architecture of the system. But I think for someone like Luther, they don't see that" -- how things work and why -- "instead it's very murky and it's hard to discern what's going on. We wanted people to understand that feeling."
Early on, the film mimics Luther's sense of confusion but details eventually get filled in.
"A cop came behind me 'cause I look tough -- I guess 'cause I'm black and I look like I would do something like that," Luther says.
"I keep telling him, 'I didn't even do anything,' and he's like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.'"
Originally Bravo and Schneider were researching a film about solitary confinement. "We were working with this activist and she was telling me about Luther, who lives downstairs from her and got arrested because of a fight outside of their apartment building.
"I was listening to this story and it was fascinating. It was like, oh my God, we've been looking at this really extreme form of incarceration but here is this other totally mundane, totally everyday story of how the prison system impacts millions of kids in this country. It's these low-level things that are hard to even pay attention to, so we thought it would be good to switch gears and make a movie about that."
The elements that stay with you aren't the specifics of the case, but the verite moments -- the camera silently observing this family at home; kids on the couch, horsing around; Luther juggling a phone call from his father as he and his little brother make breakfast (frozen pancakes from the store, tossed in the microwave then topped with jelly). Throughout, the film is scored with churning, mellow electronica from producer Black Ant.
Audiences sometimes conflate documentary filmmaking with journalism. That wasn't Bravo and Schneider's approach -- they had an active interest in supporting Luther throughout what became a two-year process as his case wound its way through the courts.
I asked if that ever presented complications. How do you make a good film, an honest film, when you're in the bag for your subject?
"That never came up," he said. "But it did get interesting with Luther's lawyer because at one point he accused us of withholding information in order to create more drama for a scene.
"I really don't think that we did that. There was a snow day and they were moving courtrooms and there was some confusion. We showed up at court with Luther and we're trying to get to the right courtroom on time, but we had no idea where he was supposed to go. The lawyer thought we did know." And assumed the filmmakers were juicing the moment.
That's something a reality show producer might actually do. "The lawyer was like, 'Why didn't you just call me?'"
It's such a complicated dynamic -- the public defender is suspicious of the film crew, and yet it appears he expected them to step in on Luther's behalf and make that sort of phone call.
That's dicey territory for a journalist, but not so much a filmmaker.
"Our responsibility was on a humanistic level," said Bravo. "The focus was: What's my responsibility to Luther as a person, rather than a responsibility as a journalist. We weren't so concerned with maintaining that impartiality."
"Control" screens 7 p.m. Sunday at Loyola University (courtesy of Chicago Filmmakers) with a post-show discussion with director Chris Bravo. Go to chicagofilmmakers.org.
Chicago-made indie gets distribution
Here's what I wrote about "Animals" when it had a one-night screening in town earlier this year: "Films about drug addiction tend to have a punishing quality. Even the good ones ... What you don't expect are occasional moments of sly humor, which is what makes 'Animals,' the lovely new Chicago-shot indie, such a wonderful surprise." The film, inspired by the real life experiences of former Chicago theater actor David Dastmalchian (who wrote the screenplay and also stars), was recently acquired by Oscilloscope Laboratories, which will release it in theaters in 2015. Dastmalchian, who tells me he is developing yet another Chicago-set movie, is currently shooting Marvel's "Ant-Man" in which he has a major role playing Paul Rudd's best friend.
Cinema Italiano
The Chicago Italian Film Festival takes over the Music Box this week, focusing on Italian comedies old and new including 1961's "Divorce Italian Style" ("Divorzio all'italiana") which "leaves no stereotype unturned: Mafioso bigwigs, horny old patriarchs and hot-under-the-collar yokels all get a trip to the chopping block" (Friday and Nov. 27) and 2014's "I Can Quit Whenever I Want" ("Smetto quando voglio") which "follows a bunch of academics that do a "Breaking Bad" and enter the drug trade" (Friday and Monday). Go to musicboxtheatre.com.
Old-school Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" from 1957 stars Kirk Douglas as a commanding officer who defends three soldiers who are court martialed for refusing to continue a pointless mission during World War I. Criterion.com calls it a "haunting, exquisitely photographed dissection of the military machine in all its absurdity and capacity for dehumanization." It screens Saturday and Wednesday at the Siskel. Go to siskelfilmcenter.org/paths_of_glory.
nmetz@tribune.com
Twitter @NinaMetzNews
