While many people may have been enjoying Dev Patel as that quintessential English boy/grown man in David Copperfield, I went for an indie film in the DEBATE section – riveting films that amplify, scrutinise, argue and surprise.
Clemency did all of that and more. Director and Screenwriter Chinonye Chukwu spent more than a year with in depth research talking to and sharing experiences with prison warders and inmates before feeling ready to create a film that dealt with current attitudes, ethics and issues around prisons and states where the death penalty still exists and its corrosive effects on personal relationships and inner lives.
Chinonye Chukwu has become the first black female filmmaker to win a prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
This film is focused on another black female in the top of her profession, the prison warden presiding over the deaths of her prisoners.
The opening sequences were stunning, we see the Warden (Alfre Woodard) walking along a corridor, she stops in a doorway and we see what she sees – the paraphernalia of death. The gurney, the straps everything we need to see, and the shot stays there, this is not a blink and you miss it film.
There is a telling moment in the film when the dedicated lawyer, played by Richard Schiff says “when I win, nobody dies”. It is this hard nexus that balances this film. The warden does her job, as efficiently and as correctly as the procedures allow, but in the end she has to preside over an execution.
The central action is devoted to one prisoner, Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge) accused of aggravated burglary and shooting a police officer, the burglary part is undisputed, but there were two people there and it is possible that Anthony was not the shooter, nevertheless it is he who is on death row.
This will be Bernadine Williams twelfth execution, her eleventh – which we also witness – went very badly wrong.
Her white male deputy is moving to another prison as Warden, wise choice the prison has no death row. The Chaplain is also male and white and is retiring, one of the officers, the one who actually starts the process has to quit. Why doesn’t Bernadine retire as well?
This film is very much about a death row prison as a workplace, the Warden has to deal with the care and support of her staff, the care and eventual demise of those people on death row, she has to deal with applications by lawyers, reporters and other protesters at every stage and on every day; she has to deal with families waiting for that last frail hope of a reprieve; at the same time she also has to follow the exact procedures, the correct paperwork, the correct conversation with the prisoner, the final go ahead from the state governor and then the death scene itself.
But it is implicitly clear that this is a woman, who against all odds has reached the pinnacle of her profession – how can she just give it up?
A complex, challenging and brilliant film. Everything about it was studied, measured and authentic, the slow build up of pressure and the last scene was breathtaking, not many top level actors would have agreed to the final head shot of the Warden…
