Review: Lorena

Lorena **** / *****

Directed by: Joshua Rofé.

 

The thought process behind Amazon’s four-part, four-hour documentary series on Lorena Bobbitt is to try and do the same thing for this infamous case from the 1990s as Ezra Edelman’s masterpiece O.J.: Made in America did for that case. The result isn’t quite as good as that film – which is after all the best documentary of the decade, and one of its best films as well, but it’s still wonderful. I’m not quite sure the larger social issues that the documentary hangs on this case fits together as neatly as the documentary would like you to believe it does, even if those connections are there.

 

In case you aren’t a child of the 1990s, or forget the case in question, the basics are really quite simple. Lorena Bobbitt was a young woman who in 1993 cut off her husband’s penis as he slept, took off in her car, and threw the penis out the window into some tall grass – where it was eventually found, and subsequently reattached – and apparently worked just fine. Lorena, and her husband John Wayne Bobbitt, become media sensations for the tabloid papers – and eventually worldwide news organizations. Even when more details of the case emerged – with Lorena claiming that she suffered years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of John, all of which led her to snap and do what she did, people really never could get over the shock of her actions. It’s not everyday someone gets their penis cut off by their wife after all.

 

Lorena, the documentary, will give you all the details of the case you could ever want. It has interviews with all the key players in it – both Lorena and John extensively. It looks at the investigation, the media sensation around the case – and both trials – John being charged with raping Lorena, Lorena for cutting off John’s penis – and the aftermath for both of them through the years.

 

The lens through which director Joshua Rofe wants to view this case is one of domestic violence – looking at this case as an extreme example of what can happen when the problem isn’t addressed. It’s amazing to see how many states still didn’t think it was a criminal matter if a man raped his wife in the 1990s – and also how little funding there was to help victims of domestic violence. Given this is the lens that the film looks at this case, John Wayne Bobbitt really couldn’t come across any worse than he does here. That’s mainly his own fault however. While he has always said Lorena lied about all that abuse – his actions after all of this surely make you believe her way more than you believe him. His various attempts to “cash-in” on his notoriety never really worked out for him. The fourth hour of the film – that depicts everything he did after, the porn movies, and all the other charges of domestic violence don’t do him any favors, and neither does his excuses for all of them. It’s always someone else’s fault. There is an incredibly sad few minutes where he recounts his own abusive childhood, that may be the only moment in the film you feel truly sorry for him.

 

What the documentary succeeds at is taking you behind the headlines – behind the initial shock value of the act itself, and see the case on a deeper level. Most of the news coverage at the time never even really attempted to do so. It wants you to listen to the various people involved, and perhaps see them not as tabloid figures there to make you laugh – but as genuine people.

 

On that level, I think the film works remarkably well. I think the film strains a little bit when it tries to make larger points on domestic violence policy in America. It’s also odd that the two politicians it focuses on as trying to do something on the issue in the early 1990s were Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders – the two frontrunners for the Democrat Presidential Nomination next year – especially in the same film that sees the Lorena Bobbitt case as an extension of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings – which Biden was largely responsible for (and for which, he gets a pass here). I do think the case is a good one for pointing out the differences between how men and women see things – although not the perfect one that O.J. was for looking at race in America. Hopefully what the film will do is make people see past the jokes – to the very serious case that lied beneath. And the issue that while this is not a perfect representation of, is at least an example to be learned from.

Movie Review: Lost for Life

Lost for Life
Directed by: Joshua Rofé

As the documentary Lost for Life was being filmed, the Supreme Court of America was considering whether or not mandatory life with parole sentences for teenagers convicted of murder constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Lost for Life positions itself as a neutral movie – providing the story of the several men, now in their 20s, who have been sentenced as such for crimes committed when they were 15, 16 or 17 – as well as the family of some of the victims of such crimes. But it isn’t really a neutral documentary at all – it spends far more time with the convicted killers than it does with the victim’s family, and I cannot help but wonder if they didn’t handpick the ones they wanted to help make their point clearly. Lost for Life quite clearly believes that these young men deserve at least a chance at freedom again at some point in their life – that one act shouldn’t condemn them to life, and that because they are so young, they may well be rehabilitated in prison – something that life without parole makes moot. But just because the movie is more biased than it pretends to be, doesn’t mean the documentary is meaningless. And even if they have handpicked the young men to show in the documentary to better make their point, it still does make their point effectively – after all, if there are a few people who may deserve a second chance outside of prison, perhaps there are many more among the thousands of teenagers who have been sentenced to life without parole.

Lost for Life doesn’t shrink away from the crimes committed by the young men they portray. They have them tell the camera what they did in as much detail as they can remember – and most of them remember a great deal. In the one case where the memory of the convicted killer fails – he says it’s blurry in his memory – the movie uses video and audio evidence to fill in the gaps. In that case, two young men were convicted of the crime – the one whose memory is hazy at least is trying to take full responsibility for his actions – and doesn’t try to downplay his involvement. The other teenager is exactly the opposite – even five years later he places all the blame on his co-defendant, and his family protests his innocence, even though we hear some pretty clear evidence that he was more involved than he wants to admit – perhaps even to himself.

Another young man has been convicted of murdering his mother and step father – and even if he suffered for years under these two, who abused him physically, sexually and emotionally, he is still in jail for life. He is much more matter of fact about his crime – at times, it’s actually a little creepy, and I am not as convinced as the movie appears to be about his new, more positive outlook on life.

Lost for Life is not a great documentary. It actually plays very much like a CNN special report that you see on the network late at night when you can’t sleep. However, I always liked those CNN special reports – so for the most part, I found Lost for Life fascinating. As a movie, it plays it safe – but it’s effective. The movie is short at 75 minutes – but that is about the length the movie needs to be. The movie is decent for what it is – nothing more, nothing less.