Attica

Most cinephiles know about Attica, if only from the iconic reference in Dog Day Afternoon. But now, on the 50th anniversary of America's largest prison revolt, Stanley Nelson (The Murder of Emmett Till, Jonestown: The Life & Death of People’s Temple, Freedom Riders) brings us an in-depth documentary chronicling the five-day uprising. How refreshing, in this time of "innovative" approaches to non-fiction filmmaking, to see such an engrossing and provocative combination of a good old-fashioned archival footage / talking-head documentary. Nelson and co-director Traci Curry waste little time setting the stage and contextualizing the situation in the overcrowded New York maximum-security state prison. The conditions were atrocious: medical care barely existed, the prisoners were treated like animals, and relations between the predominantly Black and Puerto Rican inmates and the nearly all-white guards were horrendous. On the morning of Sept. 9, 1971, it all came to a head when 1,200 inmates took 39 guards as hostages, leading to a standoff that lasted four days.

Nelson, Curry, and editors Jaclyn Lee and Aljernon Tunsil tell the story chronologically by sifting through the mountains of contemporaneous news footage and combining that with newly recorded interviews with surviving prisoners, the children of many of the guards, and others who were present during the multi-day siege. The story is riveting and infuriating. The breadth of interviewees and plethora of TV footage enables the picture to expand past the penitentiary walls into the town of Attica—where the prison was the main employer for the nearly all-white community—to the office of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and all the way to Richard Nixon’s White House. Clips from television news reports trace how the national reaction turns from sympathetic to hostile as time passes. It’s a microcosm study in how quickly and easily public opinion turns, based on what we’re spoon-fed by the media.

But what makes Attica such a striking and important film for our times is that it exposes the lie of “Law and Order.” Nixon was the original Law and Order politician, and that irony should have been enough to dissuade any future candidates from running under such a tainted slogan. But, of course, the term is simply too powerful and effective to discard. This documentary exposes what people really mean when they say they want “Law and Order.” They mean they want the Law to enforce and preserve hierarchical caste—which many believe was laid down by God himself. This “natural order” always has certain folks at the top and certain folks at the bottom. Whenever the accepted order is threatened, the law must intervene. Of course, no "Law and Order" peddler ever wants the law applied fairly. They rarely take issue when people at the top violate laws, no matter how egregious the crime. But they get worked up with near-religious zeal when it comes to unreservedly punishing those at the bottom. And you can’t get much lower status in America than prisoners of color.

Attica provides us with yet another cinematic opportunity to look at our present through the lens of our past. We can study the events of fifty years ago and see our contemporary selves reflected back in each moment, each character, and each critical turn in the unfolding story.