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80Detailing the birth, life and death of America's first major urban housing project in St. Louis, Chad Freidrichs' The Pruitt-Igoe Myth combines concise but thoroughgoing sociological-historical analysis and elegant cinematic resources in service of an uncommonly artful example of film journalism.
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80Armed with archival footage and wrenching interviews, filmmaker Chad Freidrichs revisits one of our nation's darkest hours - and emerges with a scrupulous, revelatory consideration of the varied factors that turned a worthy plan into a horrific, state-sanctioned nightmare for a generation of working-class African-Americans.
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80This history is too recent to seem dry, and the film gets an added emotional punch from interviews with former tenants, whose memories mix fondness with anger and loss.
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Feb 7, 201275The Pruitt-Igoe Myth doesn't offer easy conclusions.
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75The film ends on a note of courage, and a call-to-action that we "remember," naturally, but we can't completely buy it: What Freidrichs has accomplished is a portrait of unknowability.
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70A well-researched and iconoclastic documentary that is both thoughtful and troubling, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is indeed a cautionary tale, but what it cautions against is the lure of easy judgments derived from prejudices and ignorance of the facts.
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70What gives the film its human dimension are the conflicting memories of former residents.
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50Under a different set of circumstances - in a different society - the development might have flourished. But The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a documentary, not fantasy.