Loving boys

jotix100

The title of this magnificent documentary is ambiguous enough to suggest the director was getting to know this family, or the actual incarceration of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. Andrew Jarecki accomplishes a deeply disturbing portrait of a family in turmoil in the suburbs, where everything is supposed to be ideal and things like this never happen.

Arnold Friedman was a sick man. He was a homosexual and a pedophile, who took refuge in the form of a normal father and husband in Great Neck. In almost all cases such as this, the pedophile has been a victim himself at an earlier age. The way he translated his desires was by molesting other children that might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Arnold must have been sexually abused by the some of the men his mother took to bed, and he in turn, made his own brother Howard have improper sex with him.

In abusing his own son, Jesse, Arnold proves that his appetite doesn't differentiate between his own flesh and blood from a stranger. Jesse must have loved the attention his father always showed him and went along with the sickening arrangement to keep his father happy. Jesse in turn will probably go into being a pedophile himself because deep inside of him will be a desire to do unto others what was done to him when he couldn't fight back.

Elaine, the mother, is a pathetic figure in this household. She had no clue of what was going on under her roof. She turned perhaps a blind eye toward what her husband was doing under her nose because there must have been indications that Jesse's relationship with his father was not normal. Jesse, as a child, had such a tender beauty that it's not difficult to see the way he awakened a sickening desire in his own father.

As far as the case is concerned, it all came about because of the Postal inquiry about the pornography that Arnold bought as a way to satisfy his cravings. Since he was heavily into taking home movies, it will surprise no one that he had access to a lot of young boys that were his children's playmates and ultimately his own students of computer science at the very beginning of the technology.

All the Friedmans, with the exception of Seth, who doesn't appear in the documentary, express their opinions as commentators; they all cooperated willingly, or so it seems, with the director. We wonder to what extent Elaine keeps denying her knowledge, or David, for that matter because it's obvious that Jesse is not one to ask because all what he went through is very painful, or he would not be objective about this case.

Even Howard, Arnold's own brother can't understand what was going on in his brother's house. He talks to the camera and seems absolutely normal about telling this story. Toward the end of the documentary, his male lover gives his own account and frankly, it surprises the viewer, because we had no indication at all that Howard was gay and living with in a seeming healthy relationship.

The young people that were made to accuse the Friedmans fall under two categories, either they were speaking the truth, or they were made to confess things that didn't happen to them. There have been a lot of instances with smaller children, where the police and criminal investigators have put into their minds things that they think occurred, thus making these young ones to react as though it was indeed what they experienced in the hands of pedophiles. Jesse is taken to prison as well as Arnold because they are accused by the former students of having acted improperly.

There is a revealing sequence in an interview with the lawyer that defended the Friedmans. It's seen toward the end of the film. In it, the lawyer speaks about the time he visited Arnold in prison and how nearby there was a man who was holding a young boy in his lap. As the child was getting restless, he kept jumping up and down and that action kept turning Arnold on sexually, that he asks the lawyer to move to another area. It is at this point that we get an insight into Arnold's perverse and uncontrollable sick mind and what aroused him.

By way of atoning, or perhaps in a last effort to ask forgiveness from Jesse, Arnold takes a life insurance policy that makes his youngest son the beneficiary, but nothing else goes to the family, or at least, it's never explained in the film.

This is one of the most disturbing documentaries that have come out in a long time. Thanks should go to the director Andrew Jarecki for delving into the tragic story of the Friedman family.

score 10/10

jotix100 19 July 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0907983/