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'Stevie' discovers honesty
By John Behling
Published:
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Media Credit: photo courtesy of lionsgate films
Filmmaker Steve James (left) with the subject of his new film �Stevie� Steve Fielding (right).
Steve James, while discussing his new documentary, "Stevie," uses one word with striking repetition: honesty.
As he says on camera, "This film will be an honest film, as honest as I can make it." The second half of that statement is the ultimate challenge for a filmmaker who turns the camera on himself. How James maintains the integrity of "Stevie" in light of this unique and difficult subject is both a statement of the film's power and James' will to make a film that truly is honest.
James brought a camera crew in 1995 when he returned to rural Pomona, Ill. in order to reconnect with Stephen Fielding, a youth James had been a Big Brother to while he was in college. Stevie re-enters James' life as a 24-year-old man. Shirtless, tattooed and on crutches, Stevie openly threatens to kill his mother in one of the early visits.
Two years pass while James finds reasons not to return to Pomona, including an offer to direct Disney's "Prefontaine," a narrative film about the Olympic runner. Then a serious event became both a realization of James' worst nightmares and a point of no return for the filmmaker.
In the kind of dramatic twist that all documentarians are bound by, Stevie is arrested for molesting his 8-year-old cousin, a crime he would later confess to. While Stevie's legal problems develop, James takes a look into "what went wrong," spanning his abusive childhood, failed placement in a string of foster homes, committal to a mental hospital and repeated problems with the law. The film raises the difficult question of what can be done for troubled children that seem to fall so quickly through the system into lives of criminal behavior. While James may not answer this question outright, he succeeds in framing the problem completely, compiling the portrait of a sex offender that is both honest and compassionate.
The camera becomes a sober examiner of Stevie and his family members, carefully sculpting the product into an account from all sides, which neither spares nor condemns anyone. This lack of a concrete target for blame makes the film as difficult to forget as it is to watch, not allowing the audience to simply place their blame and move on.
"We increasingly came to realize that there is no right side to this story. There is no one person who is absolutely without fault and somebody who is absolutely at fault," James told University Chronicle.
But the question remains, can you make a film that portrays yourself honestly when you stand on both sides of the camera as James did in "Stevie?"
James handled this problem by allowing his collaborators to moderate the editing of his scenes. "It was hard for me to make some of those judgments. My impulse was always to take more of me out. There were times where they said no, this is important, this should be in the film," James said. What is left depicts James' struggle with the moral issues concerning his involvement in Stevie's life, his guilt over leaving Stevie and his struggle to find out who Stevie really is.
In a landscape where documentaries are gaining appeal among movie-goers and may be headed for bigger screens and bigger audiences, "Stevie" is definitely a film worthy of rewarding a new mass audience.
"People are finding that documentaries don't have to be viewed as medicine. They don't have to be viewed as something to go to because they're good for you. They can be compelling, they can have a great story, they can be funny. They can be everything that people are looking for in a movie, but they also happen to be about real life."
"Stevie" opens tomorrow at the Landmark Uptown Cinema in Minneapolis.
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