The Work **** / *****
Directed by: Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous.
Once a week, inmates at Folsom Prison attend group therapy. Most of these men have been in jail for years, and have years more to go until they get released – and some know they will never get released at all. The group therapy gives them an opportunity to break down what went wrong in their lives, and get to something more real and painful inside them and let it out. Twice a year, the prison opens its door and allows civilians to attend a four day group therapy session right alongside the inmates. The Work documents one of these four day sessions – and does so with surprising restraint. Yes, there is material here that could be fashioned into some sort of inspirational doc – but director Jairus McLeary (and co-director Gethin Aldous) don’t do that so much, as simply sit back and observe. In doing so, you really do get to see how therapy of this sort works – it forces the audience to sit there in what are sometimes awkward, long silences, or other routines of this sort of therapy – it doesn’t give you a choice. If that works well to give you a peak in this 90 minute documentary – imagine if you had to do this hour after hour, day after day. You kind of don’t have a choice but to embrace it – the alternative is even worse. The film follows three of the civilians inside the prison for this four days of therapy – a middle aged black man named Charles, whose father was in prison when he was born, and he never got to meet, Brian, a judgmental hothead, who cannot help but find fault in everyone he comes in contact with, and Chris, a middle twenties kind of hipster, who tries to stay detached from the whole process but that can only last for so long. You can tell early in the movie that all of them have moments when they question what they signed up for – it doesn’t take long for one of the inmates – named Kiki – to go through a powerful process that allows him to open up and feel the grief about his dead sister he has always denied. This involves awkwardly long eye contact, screaming, and eventually the rest of the inmates holding him down, as he lets out all of that rage, and gets to something underneath.
Eventually, though, all three of them will have breakthroughs of a sort during the process (one of the unfortunate things about the film, is that Chris waits the longest to have his breakthrough – and frankly, it pales in comparison to much of the rest of the movie, even if it comes last). Throughout, the prisoners are thoughtful – open and honest. They’ve done this work already, and are smart enough to know that it’s only a beginning, not an end. It’s one thing to open up and left that rage out – it’s another thing to replace it with something else. Most of them haven’t quite gotten there yet – and certainly the three civilians aren’t fully there either. But the process has started – progress has been made.
The Work is a wonderful documentary because it doesn’t push too hard – it simply sits back and allows things to play out. The film has no voiceover narration, no music, etc. – instead it lets things play out however they are going to. I think the film shows both the positives, and potential negatives (it only works if you want it to – if you fight it too hard, you’re not getting anyway). The film is a quiet, sly critique of toxic masculinity and violence, without ever really mentioning either. It doesn’t need to – we can see it throughout the film, and we watch as men – for some, it’s too late, for other not – to try and overcome it, so it doesn’t ruin their lives. It’s a quiet documentary – and all the better for it.
