Stevie

This documentary from Steve James came out a few years ago, and I remembered seeing the trailer, but missing the film. Finally saw it last night, and it’s an outstanding piece of personal filmmaking that addresses the nature of documentary and objectivism. It also closely examines justice, faith, love, family, personal responsibility and the failings that come with being human. (A character in the film laments that she might have been able to help more, if she just wan’t so human.)

Steve James directed Hoop Dreams, and of course I thought that was a great film, even though I couldn’t relate too much to basketball playing prodigies in a big city. Stevie on the other hand was nearly filmed in my backyard. About 100 miles south of where I grew up actually. People from Chicago like to say that everything outside of Cook County is downstate, but actually, you can tell you’d still be fighting on the right side of the Civil War into you get about an hour south of Springfield. That’s where the icebergs stopped flattening everything in their path during the ice age, and two distinct things happen there: geographically, you start to get hills and more trees and that humid, lush, buggy green. Culturally, you get the South.

I don’t want to give away too much of this film, because it is packed with surprises that are worth seeing on your own, but the filmmaker, while going to SIU, (where most of my high school friends went), joined Big Brothers and was paired with a troubled teen named Stevie. Several years later, Steve decides to go see how Stevie has changed and turned out. He travels from Chicago to Southern Illinois and the answers are “not much” and “not well.” Seemingly shaken, he leaves and doesn’t return for another year or two.

S. James had decided this might be a good subject for a film before he ever re-established contact with Stevie, which is key, because had he known what he would end up with, I don’t believe he would have ever made this film.

There are remarkable people in this film: Stevie’s fiancee, his fiancee’s best friend, Stevie’s fishing partner, Stevie’s step-sister, her husband…

This film is at least as good as Joe Berlinger’s Brother’s Keeper and superior to Paradise Lost. I bring them up as Stevie‘s closest touchstones. There is a helplessness and inevitability of events that is compelling and heartbreaking, and the final statements made by Stevie’s fiancee to Steve James is the kind of purely innocent yet brutal condemnation of action that no script or actor could ever deliver.

This film is also noteworthy for its depiction of people with disabilities, but the chief reason for that is that the two disabled people in the film are simply incredible people.

I’m gushing here, I realize, without saying too much of note. But I encourage the group to search this one out on Netfilx, and then come back to this post and let me know what you think (unless you have already seen it).

I grew up with people so close to what I saw in this film that it was like opening my school yearbook. So perhaps it won’t resonate with others as closely as it does with me, but I’ll bet you’re still mightily impressed by this film.