Sing Sing

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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There have been countless films about prisons and inmates, but they invariably focus on break-ins, morality, or crime and punishment. Seldom are they concerned with the inmates as human beings, soulful selves with humanity, emotion, and sensitivity.

A new film “Sing Sing,” from drector Greg Kwedar, does this very thing flawlessly with great openness, heart, and a trace of humor.

Divine G. (Colman Domingo) is an inmate in Sing Sing prison, and although innocent, is nevertheless incarcerated for murder. He is also a playwright and founder of RTA: Rehabilitation Through the Arts. Each day he leaves his tiny cell and workshops possible play productions that the inmates produce every six months. This season they decide on a screwball comedy for a change of pace.

Divine G befriends Clarence Maclin, who plays himself. He is an actual Sing Sing inmate, and he also co-wrote the screenplay.

Maclin has anger issues, but he is intrigued by G’s theater work and resolves to humor him along. Through the sharing of jokes and stories, Maclin becomes a key part of the group theater.

Actor Paul Raci (CODA) is Brant, the tireless director and Sean San José is G’s irreverent friend Mike Mike.

A crisis ensues when along with the sudden death of Mike Mike, Maclin feels a loss of purpose in theater and human respiration and simply wishes to give up. G urges him to re-consider.

G and Maclin are boxed in and cubed in concrete. The only way to expand and express is through the dramatic arts, in much the same visceral and physical way that the Surrealist Artaud once had in mind with his Living Theater. Theater in this story is propulsive, mirror-like, and confrontational. It is not an act of fiction but a realistic ritual of life and the sensation within.

The pathos is wonderfully accented by actual inmates who play themselves. Each person is dynamic, quirky, daring and irrepressibly individualistic.

Rather than the stark gray trauma of conventional prison films “Sing Sing” presents an oasis of expression, a mental garden of unbound creativity.

Though this film has its share of melodrama, it never once relinquishes its hold on authenticity, and it is one of the most realistic films on prison, life, and the joy and sadness within human beings that you’re ever likely to see on screen.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com