A different feel than most Ken Burns documentaries, likely because it tells a story that took place such a short time ago with people still feeling the consequences of this grave injustice. This one is out now on Blu-ray.
“In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. They spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he alone had committed the crime, leading to their convictions being overturned. Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, The Central Park Five tells the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgement by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories and an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.”
In 1989, five teenagers from Harlem, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, were arrested and eventually convicted for the rape and assault of a woman in New York City’s Central Park. After hours of aggressive interrogation, the teenagers gave confessions, despite inconsistencies in their stories and the absence of physical evidence connecting them to the crime. They would ultimately spend between six and thirteen years in prison before serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, with DNA evidence supporting his confession. Their convictions were vacated in 2002.
Ken Burns’ documentary The Central Park Five tells this story from the perspective of the five men whose lives were forever altered by what happened. It is a difficult film to watch, not simply because of the crime itself, but because of the realization of how quickly five young men were transformed from teenagers into villains in the eyes of the public. The police investigation, the media frenzy, the political climate, and the rush to judgment all combined to create a tragedy that would follow these men for the rest of their lives.
What makes the story particularly heartbreaking is just how young they were. These were children who entered the criminal justice system and emerged years later having lost a portion of their lives that could never be returned. The filmmakers aren’t simply interested in explaining what happened, but in showing the human cost of what happened. Ultimately, this is a story about five men who lost their youth, but somehow managed to maintain their dignity through an experience that could have destroyed them.
Ken Burns is, of course, one of the most recognizable names in documentary filmmaking, and The Central Park Five is interesting because it feels much closer to home than many of his other works. Burns has spent much of his career examining events that have become part of history, often decades or even centuries removed from the present. Here, however, the events were still relatively fresh when the film was released in 2012. The people involved were still here to tell their stories, and the consequences of what happened were still being felt. It wasn’t until years after the documentary was released the men reached a settlement with New York City to compensate them for their mistake, but no compensation can give them back their youth.
This proximity with the present gives the film a different weight. This doesn’t feel like something safely contained in a history book. It’s recent, perhaps most importantly, it forces us to recognize that history isn’t always something that happened long ago. Sometimes it is something that happened within our own lifetime, to people who are still living with its consequences.
One of the most interesting departures from Burns’ traditional documentary style is the absence of narration. Rather than having a narrator guide us through the story, the film allows the people involved to tell it themselves. The filmmakers specifically chose to let the voices of the five men drive the narrative, supplemented by interviews with other participants and extensive archival material. It’s a surprisingly effective choice. There is something more intimate about hearing these men describe what happened in their own words rather than having someone else explain their experiences to us. It also makes the film feel less like a history lesson and more like listening to someone tell you about something that happened to them. The absence of narration doesn’t make this feel less like a Ken Burns documentary, but it does make it noticeably different from much of his later work.
The film also does an excellent job recreating the world in which this happened. The New York of the late 1980s was a city dealing with violence, racial tension, poverty and a media culture hungry for sensational stories. The filmmakers use archival footage, photographs, music and imagery of the city to establish that environment, showing how the circumstances surrounding the case helped create an atmosphere where outrage could quickly overpower reason.
The story received another significant resurgence years later with Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us. Released in 2019, the four-part series dramatized the case and followed the five teenagers from their arrests through their convictions, imprisonment, exoneration and eventual settlement with New York City.
The two works approach the story very differently. The Central Park Five is the documentary record, allowing the actual people involved to speak for themselves, while When They See Us uses dramatic performances to place the viewer inside the experiences of the teenagers and their families. The Netflix series brought renewed attention to a case that many people may not have known about, or may have only remembered through the distorted version presented by the media at the time. What is somewhat disheartening to a degree is the fact that it feels like more attention and more consequences resulted from a Netflix series than a PBS documentary.
Video
The Blu-ray presentation is solid, particularly considering the documentary’s mixture of modern interviews, archival footage, photographs and period video. The newly filmed interviews (at the time of filming) are sharp, with strong detail and natural skin tones, while the archival material understandably varies in quality depending on its original source.
Audio
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is clean and effective. Dialogue is the most important element here, and the interviews come through clearly. Music and period audio make good use of the surround channels, while the mix also captures the noise and atmosphere of New York.
Special Features
- Interview with the Filmmakers
- After the Central Park Five
The Central Park Five is a difficult documentary, but it is an important one, and probably the shortest of the Ken Burns’ films. The real tragedy in this film is the years of life that were taken from five young men because so many people were willing to believe the worst before the truth had a chance to emerge. It is a sobering reminder of what can happen when fear, prejudice, sensationalism and the desire for a quick answer become more important than the truth. A powerful documentary about a terrible miscarriage of justice, and five lives that should have been very different. This one is out now.
AV Entertainment provided us with a copy of this disc for review, which if interested, you can pre-purchase here.
