Courage, candour and inspiration
A review of The Interrupters
Three words are used in the closing credits of Steve James’s new masterpiece documentary where the filmmakers thank their characters—those who gave incredible, intimate access to their lives and work—for their “courage, candour and inspiration.” These are indeed fitting words for some of the bravest, most committed and selfless heroes ever to be shown on the screen. The film is The Interrupters and the heroes are the interrupters themselves – the courageous individuals in Chicago who interrupt cycles of violence in mostly black and latino youth circles. This documentary is nothing short of perfection: It is an inspired political work that bridges the difficult terrain of ethics and aesthetics with a poetic visual sensibility and charged respect for the subjects that never loses site of the story.
Steve James (best known for directing the Academy Award-winning Hoop Dreams) told me that the name “The Interrupters” was chosen because it sounds like it could be a movie about superheroes. As it turns out, the film is indeed about superheroes, only these superheroes do not have special powers or wear capes. They do however fight crime, intervening in cyclical socio-political tensions and problems as they percolate, before they escalate to crimes of violence. They are comprised of ex-offenders and their work with CeaseFire, a non-profit making the most from scarce resources, is dangerous, stressful, and impossibly challenging. This film champions their unsung efforts and ultimately reveals the life-changing (indeed society-changing) effect an individual can have at the most dire and volatile time of someone else’s life.
James told the audience after the Hot Docs screening that the filmmakers think a little differently than the standard “how can a person change” sentiment. After spending a year with the interrupters and the youth they work with, the filmmakers see the transformative effect of mediation and intervention as framed more by “how can we help someone go back to who they really are?” The Interrupters shows, with gorgeous, confident cinematography, impeccable editing and a superb soundtrack, just how that process works.
From the beginning we are catapulted into perilous spaces as violence erupts between various youth who fight because of personal disagreement, competing neighbourhoods or as retaliation for previous murders and assaults. We are witnesses to how quickly the violence can escalate and indeed the now-famous video of sixteen year-old Derrion Albert being murdered in a group fight was captured in one of the Chicago neigbhourhoods where the interrupters make their interventions.
In one scene in the documentary youth pick up stones and knives and face off until an interrupter, the incredibly inspirational, powerful and articulate Ameena Matthews (whose father is notorious gang leader Jeff Fort), inserts herself, whisking away a young male who is bleeding and whose adrenaline dial is set on high. Moments later she is with him at someone’s home, removed from the fight, and laughing about how he looked like a cartoon character when he was hit in the face by the rock. “If we can get them to laugh about it, that’s a positive step” she says. The Interrupters is a film that guides us gracefully and uncompromisingly along a path of positive steps. They are the largely unknown steps toward treating violence as a behaviour problem connected to larger socio-political issues that leave under-priviliged and marginalized youths feeling alienated, cynical, and indeed violent.
The Interrupters is a gripping observational documentary that produces the most intimate spaces with vulnerable and volatile subjects but never feels intrusive or sensational. The filmmakers bring us close to the subjects without ever being intrusive, and while the bold and steady camera work results in stunning cinematography, the violence and drama is not aesthecized nor sensationalized. It is a master work of social cinema that captures the urgency of the interrupters’ work as well as the dignity and courage of both those intervening in the violence and those embroiled in it.
This was the best film that I had the pleasure to see at Hot Docs, and it will hopefully find its rightful position in the documentary canon as one of the most committed, inspired and important works in the history of the genre. Steve James, working with Alex Kotlowitz, has made a film that is lightyears away from mere documentation of a social problem – it is an urgent and relevant socio-political portrait of gifted and dedicated people changing society and in the process changing the way one views the problem of inner city violence in America.
While there should be monuments erected in America that commemorate the impassioned and exhausting work of the interrupters, The Interrupters documentary should be in every library, on every television and in every theatre in the country. In short, it is a documentary that is pure honest, courageous and inspirational storytelling.
