Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing” falls into a niche: socially conscious American dramas that make a buzz on the festival circuit. It holds one major difference from similar work. While not a documentary, “Sing Sing” is an intervention into the lives of its cast. Set amongst a group of men incarcerated at Sing Sing who participate in a theater program, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin portrays himself reliving his experience as the yard’s drug dealer. While out queer actor Colman Domingo takes the lead role, as writer John “Divine G” Whitfield, most of the rest of the actors have been incarcerated. Kwedar seamlessly weaves together performances by Domingo and a few other professional actors with people basically playing themselves. Simply by watching the film, you wouldn’t necessarily guess which is which.
“Sing Sing” opens several years after Divine G helped found the real-life Rehabiltation Through the Arts (RTA) program. Imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit, Divine G writes plays for RTA. Its participants argue about what they want to perform this year, some making a case for comedy instead of yet more work mirroring their grim lives. Brent (Paul Raci) is a director brought in from outside to help give shape to their performance. Instead of doing Shakespeare yet again, he writes a play for them to do. It’s a strange comedy about time travel, with Egyptian kings landing on a ship hundreds of years later. The narrative doles out details about its characters’ lives in brief installments, without the need to explain their entire stories. Miguel (Sean San José) briefly describes a mounting drug habit, going no further. Divine Eye becomes competition for Divine G, angling for the play’s lead role, but the men grow closer.
“Sing Sing” is a genuine riposte to most TV and movie depictions of life in jail. There are no sensational scenes of stabbings or sexual assault, just a struggle to remain hopeful amidst a daily grind of boredom within a system out to shaft incarcerated people. Profanity is the only reason it’s rated R. The film’s tone is fairly calm. Even a scene where Divine Eye shakes a man down for money ends peacefully. Whatever these men have done in the worst moments of their lives, most of those experiences are years in their past. Cruelty is contained within the state, bloodlessly, as in a moment when Divine G’s acting skill is treated as a reason to believe he’s lying about his innocence.
While the narrative push of “Sing Sing” moves towards a theater production, it’s primarily about the daily lives of men in prison, not their work as an actors. Of course, the latter play a large role in the film, but it points out the severe limits of what theater can accomplish. A successful production does not change their circumstances. It just helps them kill time. Divine G’s loneliness is shown in scenes of him speaking to a tiny group of men months after this large-scale production. The RTA sets out to help prisoners express their feelings and overcome emotional repression, with the biggest epiphany being the possibility of long-lasting friendship and a need for community that extends beyond jail. Yet its happy ending and refusal to depict violence are gentle acts of defiance. They may leave the audience walk out feeling good, but they’re such small gestures that the oppressiveness of the carceral system makes a far bigger impression.
“Sing Sing” runs the risk of turning into social worker cinema, treating marginalized people’s lives as fodder for upscale arthouse audiences. Both Kwedar and Bentley were inspired to make it by their volunteer work with RTA. The former’s path towards this film began with his production of a short about rescue dog training inside a maximum security prison in 2016. He was further inspired by a 2005 article published in Esquire: “The Sing Sing Follies.” The production was careful not to exploit its actors; the entire cast and crew received the same wages during the shoot, and they all own a piece of the eventual profits. Several cast members of “Sing Sing” now want to embark on careers as professional actors. Their chances of finding another film that offers them roles this nuanced are slim.
“Sing Sing” | Directed by Greg Kwedar | A24 | Opens July 12th at the Angelika
