50/50 Challenge Movie 2-4: Paradise Lost Trilogy

 

This past Thursday, the final film in the documentary trilogy “Paradise Lost” premiered on HBO. From director’s Joe Berlinger an Bruce Sinofsky tells the story of the West Memphis Three. Three young men (age 16, 17 and 18) who were tried for the murders of three eight year old boys. They were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, Echols being sentenced to death. But through out the trial more and more evidence or lack there of seemed to point the the boys innocents. And this past August, the three, now men, were released under the Alford Pleas. A plea where you can proclaim your innocents but under the eyes of the law remain guilty. It’s a way that a innocent can not sue the state. The three films follow the trail (the first, released in 96) the after math of the first film and the rise of the “Free the WM3” movement (released in 2000), and the status of the men in the last ten years. The legal hoops of fighting the legal system, seeking truth, and misconception.

Perhaps the most interesting person in the trilogy of films is John Mark Byers. A man in the first film is viewed as perhaps a suspect. Someone you do feel pity for since he lost his child, but shows great anger and a lack of foresight. The 2nd film shows him as the villain, someone not willing to see the evidence or the truth, merely wishing for death or worse of the three, he even has a staged funeral for them where he lights parts of the woods on fire. And the final film, where we meet an older Byers, a man of reflexion, and a man who now supports the freeing of the three men and the search for the truth. To watch all three films as I did today you see an interesting journey in everyone, but especially Byers, who goes from seeming like a person of ignorance, to someone with great reflection and thought on what has lead him to this point. The scene in the 3rd film where Byers is telling the press, that for the three men to still be considered guilty is “bullshit” is moving in a way.

The subject matter is interesting enough that Peter Jackson premiered today, a documentary that he is producing, covering the same subject manner.

Will it be as good or as moving as the three Paradise Lost films? Who can say. I would guess not, just like making one Lord of the Rings film wouldn’t be as moving as having all three. If you have HBO, or are willing to pick up the boxset once it comes out, I’d highly recommend the Paradise Lost films. They’re an interesting and scary look at the American Justice system gone wrong, very wrong. But in some ways, it ends, some what, happily.

These films show the power of documentary. The power that film can bring, to make and insight change or justice in a way that perhaps no other art can.