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Capturing the Friedmans

Universal acclaim
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 26 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Documentary
Written by:
Directed by: Andrew Jarecki
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 30, 2003
DVD: January 27, 2004
Running Time: 107 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Arnold Friedman, David Friedman, Elaine Friedman, and Jesse Friedman
The Friedmans are a seemingly typical, upper-middle-class Jewish family whose world is instantly transformed when the father and his youngest son are arrested and charged with shocking and horrible crimes.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Official Subject Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
USA Today Mike Clark
Not since "Memento" has a movie served up such a provocative mind-bender, and the Sundance winner by first-time filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has the advantage of being true.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
A spellbinder of the rarest kind and quality. It opens audiences up to an infinite variety of emotional and intellectual nuances.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
By the end of the movie, its no longer possible to know anything with certainty - so convoluted, contradictory, pathological, and long ago have the events become. Its a movie that will have you talking and thinking for hours.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
A compulsively watchable movie that's also a provocative inquiry into the ability of the criminal-justice system to determine culpability and truth.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
What's most devastating in Capturing the Friedmans is how Jarecki puts the sureness of justice into doubt as he shows Truth (with a capital T) at the mercy of perspective and perception, context and emotion.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
This remarkable, continually surprising documentary turns out to be something far richer and more complex, closer in spirit to "Crumb," another devastating film about a family's gradual self-destruction.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Jarecki has created a tour de force of narrative ambiguity, and in doing so has made one of the most honest reality shows ever.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
The more you learn, the more questions you have about life in that Great Neck house. Leo Tolstoy wrote that "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion," but not even he could have invented the Friedmans.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
To begin your career with a masterpiece is so remarkable a feat that one can only hope Jarecki finds another subject as rich as this family, which was obsessed with itself but needed a filmmaker to begin to see itself at all. [2 June 2003, p. 102]
Boston Globe Ty Burr
As the Friedmans split apart like fissile neutrons, their story becomes five stories, none of which is remotely like the others.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
An extraordinary film; it may be the most haunting documentary since ''Crumb.''
Read Full Review >Empire Adam Smith
Jarecki's film brilliantly illustrates the fallibility of memory, the slippery nature of 'facts' and even people's invention of events that may never have taken place.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Utterly compelling account of a true-life criminal investigation where "truth" can never be pinned down.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
In the entertainment culture that surrounds us, words like "harrowing," "anguishing," "unfathomable" or "horrifying" don't sell movie tickets. Capturing the Friedmans is all of these things and more.
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
First-time director Jarecki, better known as the co-founder of MovieFone, skillfully integrates the home-movie footage with his own thorough inquiry, weaving past and present into a patient, deeply engrossing piece of storytelling that's rich in ambiguities.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
Riveting and so suggestive that you can't consume it passively: You have to brood on it.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Above all else, though, Capturing the Friedmans is a vividly personal, devastating story of a family that was hopelessly compromised years before it was scapegoated for crimes that two of its members may or may not have committed.
Read Full Review >Variety Scott Foundas
There's a kind of rawness on the screen that most movies never approach.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
I've seen only a few films in my lifetime that so potently express the golden hopes of childhood and parenthood, as well as the inevitable decimation of that hopefulness -- that forward-looking bliss -- at the hands of catastrophe, or merely age, spite, and exhaustion. Or, as for the Friedmans, all of the above.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Mr. Jarecki finds a way to show that denial and hope often grow from the same vine. Lives are built around the way they're harvested -- and this talented director has a feel for the soil.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The film is as powerful as any narrative motion picture in telling a story that rips at the emotions.
Read Full Review >Premiere Howard Karren
Jarecki does a remarkable job with this easily exploitable material.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Isn't like the classic Japanese drama "Rashomon," which suggested that one person's perspective of an event gave him a different truth from the person standing elsewhere.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
By the end of Capturing the Friedmans, we have more information, from both inside and outside the family, than we dreamed would be possible. We have many people telling us exactly what happened. And we have no idea of the truth. None.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
An unforgettable and complex portrait of a nuclear family in meltdown.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
It's a modern horror story that gets you where you live.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
More than just a good crime story about the guilt or innocence of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. It's also a fascinating portrait of a seemingly normal middle-class family crumbling before our eyes.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Its like a nightmare that follows you around in daylight: you cant quite decode it, you cant shake it, you cant stop turning it over and over in your mind. This is one queasily powerful movie.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
A prime candidate for a time capsule, to disclose a century hence the current state of some of our civilization's discontents, including the ability to be convinced that one is telling the truth even when one is lying.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Capturing the Friedmans does not end after its credits roll; audiences will try the case over and over again in their heads. Jarecki does not judge, but leaves only tragic clues for us to ponder.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
Andrew Jarecki could have done more to lay out the marriage of sexual and religious and social hysteria that made cases like this possible. But he deserves credit for having the guts to say, in this case and in so many like it, who suffered the most.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jennie Punter
In the midst of this emotional train wreck in motion, with angry outbursts and accusations, there are moments of levity, jokes and even a song or two. Strangely, it does not seem irreverent or bizarre but, rather, an expression of affection, as if love is tearing them apart.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Overmatched by the strange and compelling true story that is its subject, this unfortunate film ends up both more disingenuous than it wants to admit and more awkward than it can easily acknowledge.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Jarecki shows off this footage as evidence of a truly dysfunctional family in various stages of denial. What it reveals at least as much is the modern phenomenon of reality-TV self-exposure carried to such lengths that, by comparison, the Osbournes look like the Cleavers.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 26 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Richard H. gave it a10:
flows over many provocative questions not the least of which is "what's more important: pursuing and convicting the most evil of criminals or pursuing and maintaining justice?"
Anna gave it a10:
A brilliant and challenging documentary. stunning in every sense of the word. jarecki will challenge every notion you have held about sex offenders.
Sandie E gave it a10:
Cannot stop thinking about it.
J. Ryan G. gave it an8:
The story behind the making of this documentary is almost as interesting as the film itself. But it's a rather interesting story. Apparently, the director, Andrew Jarecki, had set out to make an entirely different film, only to find out about the sordid past of this eccentric family. I suppose that's how art is born. Crafting that art is another story. I don't know if Jarecki completely succeeds, as the film is not as intense or memorable as I'd hoped. But after seeing it for the first time, my filmgoing companions and I discussed the film for about three hours. There you have it: It's good for a great debate, but it won't necessarily stay with you for more than a week or so.
David M. gave it a10:
Absolutly brilliant, gutted that I missed it originally. The best film I have seen in a long time!
Marc K. gave it a 10:
WOW! I wish I had seen this in the movies when it originally came out, rather than on Starz. Absolutely amazing...one of the very best documentaries I have ever seen. I definitely would like to read more about this. And I thought I knew families that were dysfunctional!
S. Rogers gave it a 10:
Elaine Friedman is, without a doubt, the greatest screen mother of all time. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for her...she is an inspiring, beautiful person who does what she believes in.
