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Capturing the Friedmans
Magnolia Pictures


8.5

based on 39 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 24 votes
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MPAA 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.

GENRE(S):	Documentary
DIRECTED BY:	Andrew Jarecki
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 27, 2004 Theatrical: May 30, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	107 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Winner, Grand Jury Prize (Documentary), 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Named best documentary of 2003 by the Boston Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, Toronto Film Critics Association and San Francisco Film Critics Circle.

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...

100

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.

100

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.

100

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

By the end of the movie, it’s no longer possible to know anything with certainty -– so convoluted, contradictory, pathological, and long ago have the events become. It’s a movie that will have you talking and thinking for hours.

100

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.

100

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.

100

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.

100

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A jarring, mesmerizing documentary.

100

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.

100

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A superb documentary.

100

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.

100

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]

100

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.

100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

An extraordinary film; it may be the most haunting documentary since ''Crumb.''

100

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Utterly compelling account of a true-life criminal investigation where "truth" can never be pinned down.

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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Powerful and haunting.

Slate David Edelstein

Riveting and so suggestive that you can't consume it passively: You have to brood on it.

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.

Variety Scott Foundas

There's a kind of rawness on the screen that most movies never approach.

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.

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The film is as powerful as any narrative motion picture in telling a story that rips at the emotions.

Premiere Howard Karren

Jarecki does a remarkable job with this easily exploitable material.

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.

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.

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

An unforgettable and complex portrait of a nuclear family in meltdown.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's a modern horror story that gets you where you live.

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.

Newsweek David Ansen

It’s like a nightmare that follows you around in daylight: you can’t quite decode it, you can’t shake it, you can’t stop turning it over and over in your mind. This is one queasily powerful movie.

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.

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.

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.

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.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Never less than gripping.

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.

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 24 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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.

Greg T. gave it an 8:
A very disturbing but interesting documentary of a family's downfall due to the sexual transgressions of a father and of his son. The family dynamic of the father and of all three sons pushing towards a denial of these crimes is puzzling. The only real person in this documentary is the mother, Elaine, who maintains that she does not know what her husband and her son did sexually, but that they hurt and betrayed her and wrecked her life. And indeed they did or at least they tried to. Well worth seeing, if only for a glimpse into some of the bedrooms of modern suburbia.

Greg S. gave it a 10:
Brilliant documentary on par with Errol Morris's best.

Capturing the Friedmans Magnolia Pictures

Capturing the Friedmans
Magnolia Pictures