‘Sing Sing’ assessment: Colman Domingo delivers in prison-set friendship drama

Spiritually and visually luminous, Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing is without doubt one of the yr’s strongest works. The film follows a theater manufacturing at a New York jail arts program, and is for all intents and functions a dramatization — nevertheless it stays so carefully tethered to actuality that it could as nicely be docufiction. Rustin Academy Award-nominee Colman Domingo leads an impeccable forged, lots of whom had been previously incarcerated and play variations of themselves, in a story of studying to “trust the process” of performing.

The movie is an aesthetically alluring, emotionally rigorous have a look at the best way males are molded — and damaged — by punitive techniques. But, at its core, Sing Sing is about discovering hope and catharsis via creation, and the difficulties therein. Kwedar’s deft route works in tandem with fine-tuned drama to craft naturalistic mosaics, drawn from a patchwork of actual jail experiences, leading to a piece of group storytelling each in entrance of and behind the digital camera. 

That its forged and crew had been all paid the identical fee throughout the board, and given a share of the revenue, isn’t only a crucial fairness mannequin — Hollywood at giant, take observe — however an embodiment of the film’s collective spirit, which radiates off its canvas in each scene.

What’s Sing Sing about?

Shot in a variety of actual penitentiaries — together with Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a most safety jail in upstate New York — the movie is impressed by the true story of  an unlikely friendship that was maybe destined to be. Domingo performs John “Divine G” Whitfield, an creator/playwright incarcerated at Sing Sing, who takes a eager curiosity within the jail’s RTA program (Rehabilitation Via the Arts), which phases a brand new theater manufacturing each season. In the meantime, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin performs himself: a drug vendor and jail yard extortionist who’s reluctantly roped into Whitfield’s program. That the 2 males have related nicknames is about the place commonalities finish.

Although the movie pulls from actual experiences, Sing Sing takes dramatic liberties to be able to inject the story with intention and propulsive drama. Whitfield sees one thing in Maclin that maybe he doesn’t see in himself, whether or not expertise or the necessity (and potential) for rehabilitation. Whitfield has seen and skilled the RTA’s constructive results up shut, however Maclin’s closed-off, hyper-masculine strategy to emotional expression — which one can intuit as a survival mechanism in a world that exhibits unjust cruelty towards Black males — proves a hurdle to his participation.

Nevertheless, Maclin reaches a turning level when the group offers him the ground and truly listens to his recommendation. He suggests a comedic strategy for the RTA’s subsequent manufacturing, somewhat than their ordinary fodder of Shakespearean tragedy or considered one of Whitfield’s easy dramas. Quickly, the entire group has their enter heard, and a riotous mixture of Hamlet, historic Egypt, and A Nightmare on Elm Road turns into a brazen time journey musical titled Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code — an actual play as soon as staged on the RTA, which Kwedar found within the 2005 Esquire article The Sing Sing Follies.

The trail to staging Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code is winding, between makes an attempt to garner extra jail funding for elaborate units and costumes to easily easing the tensions arising from Maclin’s involvement in an in any other case well-oiled unit. He’s confrontational, to the purpose of rejecting Whitfield’s assist in each his efficiency and his upcoming enchantment for parole. The enthusiastic creator isn’t about to surrender on him so simply. Nevertheless, when Whitfield himself struggles with hopelessness and ire, it is Maclin who makes use of the emotional instruments he’s realized on the RTA to return to his good friend’s rescue.

In centering its characters’ humanity via the lens of efficiency, Sing Sing turns into the most effective fashionable movies about appearing as nicely.

Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin ship great performances in Sing Sing.

For essentially the most half, Sing Sing’s ensemble blends into the film’s naturalistic material, however the dynamic between Domingo and Maclin isn’t so seamless — albeit with good purpose. Domingo brings a rehearsed, boisterous, theatrical high quality to Whitfield, befitting of a seasoned stage performer who takes a particular curiosity in shaping the RTA. Which is to say: He’s distinctly Domingo, with all of the pronounced inflections, buttery-smooth supply, and penchant for melodrama that makes his performances so worthwhile.

Whitfield’s resilience, and his perception that he’ll efficiently enchantment his conviction, make for very important dramatic centerpieces that inform Domingo’s strategy. He’s so jovial and conversational that he by no means feels at odds with the movie, however he does really feel like an outsider — an erudite who shows hints of conceitedness as he takes management of rehearsal classes — which makes issues all of the tougher for him when he begins to lose hope. Domingo, like Whitfield, has Shakespeare on his thoughts when he nears the top of his rope, turning into emotionally shattered in thoughts, physique, and soul whereas projecting for the again row.

This makes for an intriguing dramatic distinction with the extra naturalistic Maclin, and creates a wider chasm between them, which they should work even more durable to beat. Maclin carries himself with a street-smart self-assuredness that continuously offers strategy to a deep sensitivity and ache — which Whitfield encourages him to entry of their rehearsal classes. Watching each actors carry out, with completely different modes and strategies however striving towards a standard emotional objective, is a transferring meta-text, and Sing Sing invitations this studying via its quite a few scenes of introspective appearing workouts, permitting every participant to entry their most walled-off feelings.

The RTA’s function isn’t simply playtime, however rehabilitation of a sort totally separate from the cruelty of prisons. The place punitive lockup and invasive searches don’t do the characters a lot good, their inventive retailers afford them the prospect to get in contact with their feelings in methods even these within the exterior world won’t. The movie, on this regard, mirrors the harrowing and incisive 2017 movie The Work, a robust jail documentary whose group remedy classes are strikingly akin to the emotional recall workouts of Russian theatrician Konstantin Stanislavski, whose appearing “system” was a precursor to Lee Strasberg’s fashionable “method acting.” The extra the characters in Sing Sing rehearse, the nearer they get not simply to their fast bodily objective of placing on an important comedic efficiency, however to the non secular objective of discovering their most genuine selves.

Mashable High Tales

The film’s ensemble captures this journey in considerate style. The central relationship between Whitfield and Maclin could also be key to the unfolding drama, however let it not go unsaid: The performances are unbelievable throughout the board.

Sing Sing’s supporting gamers shine. 

The 2 different actors who be part of Domingo from exterior the jail system are Paul Raci as Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code author and RTA director Brent Buell, and Sean San José as Whitfield’s shut good friend “Mike Mike,” a Latino man whose “Hare Krishna” look — rosary beads, together with a bald head and shikha ponytail — trace at a flip in direction of ISKCON Hinduism for consolation. Nevertheless, each Raci and San José come from a spot of empathetic involvement with the jail system too. Raci, who appeared in Sound of Steel, is a CODA (a Little one of Deaf Adults) and works as an indication language interpreter throughout the felony justice system, whereas San José has labored with quite a few theater workshops in Bay Space prisons and county jails.

Each actors convey a way of enjoyable, conversational naturalism that matches the remainder of the forged, who largely play themselves, and draw from their experiences as RTA performers. Sean “Dino” Johnson has a tranquil presence, and his repetitive rehearsal strategies within the nook of quite a few frames are certain to catch your eye; Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez brings a reserved toughness that hides a delicate however recognizable vulnerability; David “Dap” Giraudy shines with a youthful vitality that’s magnetic and tragic in equal measure (he ought to be on the membership); virtually each supporting actor has a narrative to inform and a face so attention-grabbing that their silent close-ups are often sufficient to inform it.

On this approach, Sing Sing is an exquisite, multifaceted film that not solely attracts from the actual lives of its ensemble, however facilities every of their tales and personalities with a dedication to realism, which Kwedar and cinematographer Pat Scola guarantee in immensely considerate methods.

Sing Sing is a gorgeously crafted drama.

Sing Sing, for essentially the most half, avoids the query of what these males did to be able to find yourself behind bars. This solely comes up for particular, plot-centric causes regarding Whitfield and Maclin. In any other case, the film permits us to get to know every man via their jokes, their rehearsal strategies, their idiosyncrasies, and their deepest fears and fantasies relating to life exterior the jail’s partitions, as relayed via numerous considerate appearing workouts. We get to know them as folks at the start, and as artists somewhat than as “criminals” as decided by the state.

Like Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code — a mix of theatrical and cinematic influences — the route in Sing Sing combines parts of the stage and display to create one thing wholly distinctive. Its opening pictures, plucked out of time, characteristic Whitfield performing a Shakespeare piece to be able to set the temper. The mix of this present’s blinding stage lights and the celluloid movie inventory create a dreamlike haze, with visible grain virtually coming alive because it darts throughout the display.

The film additionally contains a sense of stage-like blocking; the actors’ posture and physique language converse as loudly as their voices, in moments of each camaraderie and battle. Nevertheless, because the digital camera captures these interpersonal dynamics, the cinematography takes a unfastened, freeform strategy — a documentarian, cinéma verité aesthetic — taking part in with shifting focus to be able to reveal new layers to every relationship.

Following an argument between Maclin and Whitfield, a two-shot of the would-be associates in profile captures their proximity, because the digital camera retains a distracted Whitfield out of focus whereas centering Maclin’s silent regret. It’s as if his makes an attempt to reconcile had been being blocked by the movie itself, conveying the underlying feelings extra powerfully than dialogue presumably might. Sing Sing by no means slows down, however Scola’s digital camera lingers simply lengthy sufficient on these silent moments in between conversations to have the ability to seize the phrases that go unstated by males unwilling — or unable — to talk them.

Kwedar and Scola’s use of 16mm movie creates a way of timelessness. Via its visible language, and its manufacturing and costume design — restricted to what’s seen contained in the jail partitions — Sing Sing feels evergreen, as if it might’ve been made, or set, in virtually any decade. The film additionally obscures the passage of time in disorienting methods, an impact of residing behind harsh partitions and razor wire fences.

Nevertheless, using movie additionally creates a vibrant visible distinction that feels very important to the film’s underlying themes. The jail’s partitions could also be drab, however their cream and beige pillars are interrupted by mild that doesn’t simply stream via slender home windows, however wraps its approach round them. The filmmakers lean into the pure texture of celluloid — notably, the halation results of Kodak 7207 movie inventory — to create an ethereal glow emanating from the skin world.

The boys of the RTA, who largely joke round with one another and attempt to get alongside, have to carry on to hope in some style. This often takes the type of ideas, tales, and fantasies of their lives exterior the jail’s partitions, which we by no means see, however which the forged narrates with longing and willpower as they meditate throughout recall workouts. This affords them a way of infinite emotional risk, regardless of their bodily confines. 

Regardless of the film’s documentarian really feel, and its self-reflexive strategy to efficiency, Sing Sing is at the start an entertaining, partaking story of a group thrown collectively below oppressive circumstances. As a lot because it resembles The Work, it additionally echoes the rousing classical drama of Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — solely its Nurse Ratched is the ever-present specter of the American jail system, which seeks to stifle hope and private progress.

For the boys of Sing Sing, artwork turns into each refuge and rebel, introduced not solely as a coping mechanism for incarceration, however a therapeutic various. Kwedar, via his light visible strategy, affords every imprisoned character (and previously imprisoned actor) the room — and simply as importantly, the time — to inform their very own tales, in ways in which cinema seldom does. The result’s a heartrending, visually enrapturing balm for the soul.

Sing Sing opens in restricted launch July 12, with a nationwide launch to observe August 2.

UPDATE: Jul. 11, 2024, 2:45 p.m. EDT “Sing Sing” was reviewed out of its U.S. premiere at SXSW 2024; this assessment was first printed on March 27, 2024. This text has been up to date to incorporate details about the movie’s theatrical launch.