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Capturing the Friedmans Essay

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Steward 1
Melissa Steward
Research Essay
English 367.01
12/8/04
Capturing the Friedmans

"Home movies are about innocence--our lost fuzzy, glowing personal pasts, all horseplay, and funny hats and the promise of youth" (Cooper, 23). Andrew Jarecki's remarkable film, Capturing the Friedmans captured just what is clearly a case study of extreme family dysfunction through such home videos. At first Andrew Jarecki just wanted to do a nice little documentary about clowns. He decided to try film making and thought he would cut his teeth on something easy like birthday party clowns. He had met David Friedman a top childrens birthday party clown from Manhattan, New York. Much to his surprise David …show more content…

It was also in this search that the inspectors began to have suspicions that the crimes could have involved local children who came to the room for music lessons and computer classes. Jarecki successfully emphasizes the situation leading up to Arnold's arrest that he gives the audience such imagery of what was in Arnold's house that we start to believe that he is guilty of sex crimes. "With notable skill, Jarecki and his editor Richard Hankin, have interwoven the family movies with interviews of the Friedmans, relevant police officials, postal inspectors, some lawyers, and specialists of several kinds" (Kauffmann, 25). Jarecki uses editing for persuasion. As the film begins and starts to get going we are exposed to numerous interviews that both support and oppose Arnold and Jesse. Jarecki favorably edits opposing points of view together in order to emphasize the complexity and moral underpinnings of the case. For example the shots when Arnold and Jesse are arrested, during those scenes we see and hear from their lawyer Peter. From there we see views of their trial and views of the lawyer. Andrew Jarecki also keeps the issue of guilt and innocence darkened with the use of editing. As in the part of the film David talks about how his

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