masonfisk
13th is Ava Duvernay's follow-up to Selma & what a thought provoking indictment of the American penal system it is. Like a permanent lump in the throat, this visual thesis posits continuing slavery in the US, even though it's not referred to in name, as our prison system continues to have its fill w/people of color. We have the usual barrage of talking heads, historical footage & factoids sprawled across the screen but the urgency of the message & recent history lend considerable credence to this doc's claims.
Clifton Johnson
The voices and arguments here are not new. Read "The New Jim Crow." Read "Just Mercy." Read any critical analysis of modern American jurisprudence. But this film brilliantly assembles disparate voices (Newt Gingrich and Jelani Cobb? Together? Really?) to tell the story...to tell our story. DuVernay finds our nation's narrative arc. It may be disturbing, but it is also true. As the prison population ticks up, so does your understanding of who we have been and who we are becoming.
rdoyle29
DuVernay's documentary does an extremely good job of drawing a line from slavery to Jim Crow to the mass incarceration of black men in America, tying incarceration to the rider in the 13th Amendment that allows the enslavement of those convicted of a crime. The War on Drugs started by the Nixon administration (DuVernay includes an incredible quote from John Erlichman admitting that the "War on Drugs" was a ploy to persecute anti-war protesters and African Americans) is shown to have been a tool to exploit the public's fear of black men and push agendas to get people elected and to allow corporations to profit from the prison system. A superb documentary that perhaps attempts to make few tenuous connections here or there, but is generally spot on ... and amazingly infuriating as a result.
Katia Luu
There are some interesting things to learn here. Stylistically it's very nice. I'd guess a child as young as 12 would be fine watching this mentally, maybe not emotionally though. It's not dense. The problem is the stats are cherry picked, and all the powerful moments are not cohesive. I think the creator was hoping to find some evidence that the working in prisons was the reason that the government puts a lot of people in prison (conspiracy)-that would fit perfectly with the title. But no evidence is provided for this theory, the closest it gets is the ALEC stuff, the fact that corperations craft legislation (obviously they don't vote on it).Prison is not perfect as a solution to crime in society, that's for sure. At the end we learn that electronic monitoring may be gaining traction with politicians as it would save money. But the film seems to be against this too, for the reason that it would be unfair to black people, and a continuation of slavery/segregation in a new way (my impression of their reasoning.) No suggestions of something that would work better than electronic monitoring or prison, for what to do about criminals. I felt it was very biased. It does make me curious to watch other similar documentaries.
AD
