Documentary In Its Ultimate Form: Art
“Time” is out today on Amazon Prime - watch link below article.
Time (2020) by Garett Bradley: 9/10
From director Garett Bradley comes an exceptional epic of love, devotion and perseverance more cinematic than any fiction released this year. Hot off its Sundance win and with a solid 9/10 from us, ‘Time’ is a rare example of documentary in its ultimate form: art.
In 1997 with four kids and a struggling business, Sibil Fox Richardson and her husband Robert make a desperate attempt to rob a credit union. Sibil, who goes by Fox Rich, accepted a 12-year plea deal and was paroled after three-and-a-half but Robert rejected his deal and was mercilessly handed a 60-year sentence, with no hope of parole. The film opens to Sibil as a fresh-faced young woman taping herself in a home video for Robert. With no money and pregnant with twins, she’d be forgiven for looking downcast. Instead she beams to camera, imagining the day they’ll be reunited and showing off her pregnant belly until a visibly delighted toddler interrupts by lunging into shot.
What follows is a poignant, heart-wrenching 20-year wait recounted using harmoniously blended home footage and crisp modern-day shots of a formidably strong, resilient and successful family.
Visually “Time” is stunning. The choice of black and white cleverly reconciles the two formats and combined with a sophisticated soundtrack it elegantly lifts the home footage into something more poignant. Overall the edit is patient with plenty of thoughtful, beautifully composed lingering shots - fitting for a family which, in the case of 18-year-old twins Freedom and Justus, has been forced to wait a lifetime.
Sibil is the film’s focus, who’s sheer force of nature casts a shadow over pretty much anything else. Protracted frames of her running her business or lighting up a congregation with an impassioned speech create an aura around her fierce personality. “Success is the best revenge” is here repeated maxim.
Those scenes also allow the film to make its just critique: that the US’ judicial system is unduly biased against black people. Picking up where Ava Du Vernay’s “13th” left off, Sibil condemns the prison system as “nothing but slavery” before adding “And I am an abolitionist.” But, contrary to “13th” and in a total departure from the true crime style, “Time” doesn’t delve into the details of the case or bother recounting two decades of legal defeats. Although this will frustrate some, it marks a refreshing change and instead forces us to confront the simple fact that a man is being kept from his family and that children have been raised without a father. Bradley’s approach allows for a gentle pace that embodies the film’s title and subject matter, best summed up by the moments Sibil is interminably put on hold by the courts, with us waiting in real-time.
Overall this is a masterpiece, a worthy Sundance-winner and no doubt an Oscar contender. It will draw you into a hypnotic trance before swinging you from angry to sad to jubilant, almost certainly bringing tears along the way.
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