Prison Drama 'Sing Sing' Soars | Review
Colman Domingo and Company Keep Busy Living
Few people have seen Sing Sing, and that’s a problem.
Since premiering roughly a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, this independent film, shot over 19 days in upstate New York on 16mm film, has barely scratched $2.5 million domestically. On paper, it’s not hard to see why business types would write it off: It’s a small-scale prison drama featuring a leading performer, Colman Domingo, who is only now earning “movie star” status after his Oscar-nominated turn in Rustin. Apart from Paul Raci, his co-stars are all unknowns. The closest thing to existing IP in this film is Hamlet’s famous “To be, or not to be” soliloquy.
But that is what makes this movie special.
Based on real-life people and events, Sing Sing tells the story of Divine G (Domingo), a wrongly imprisoned man who finds purpose and healing through the theater as part of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at the Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. As Divine G struggles to clear his name, he and his fellow prisoners attempt to stage an ambitious original production.
Stripped of penance and cinematic flair, director and co-writer Greg Kwedar made a bold decision that takes emotional material and elevates it to another level. Aside from Domingo and Raci (who plays the RTA director), all the primary actors are former inmates at Sing Sing and former RTA participants. This works on three levels: First, they’re damn good actors. Second, on a textual level, it creates an authenticity that can be lacking in conventional prison dramas, themselves uniquely aware of the liberating power of theater in such a hopeless place. Third, on a meta-textual level, it validates the mission of RTA: that the arts can help the incarcerated work through the pain of their past and give them a purpose for when they become free.
These three levels powerfully collide with each other in the singular performance of Clarence Maclin, who plays a younger version of himself. Referred to as “Divine Eye” while in prison, Maclin’s turn in Sing Sing is the stuff that stars are made of. Refreshingly raw, his work makes co-star Domingo’s acting look varnished and overprepared, bouncing effortlessly between frightening and cold to vulnerable and shy. In a just world, The Academy would have mailed Maclin his Oscar already with a note saying: “You won. There was no contest.”
For the sake of art, Maclin and company open the door and welcome their demons back in. And we should thank them for it. Well-staged cinematography by Pat Scola captures the oppressive reality of living within the cold, barbed-wired, brutalist architecture of Sing Sing. It’s not an easy place to live. While not outright addressed save for a handful of references to “system,” it is really through these haunting performances up and down the call sheet that we see the toll being incarcerated takes on the soul. It also reveals the Herculean task needed to both change and gain your freedom once more. In a place where most humanity goes to die, the reformed cast members reveal the small ways in which their souls could find renewed life.
Thematically, the film evokes the classic prison drama The Shawshank Redemption and future masterpiece The Fablemans: “Fear can hold you prisoner, art can set you free.” (Yes, I know that’s not the actual line from the movie but bear with me).
Distributor A24 tried to position this film as their great awards contender. Sadly, its botched rollout that put its expanded rollout in the August graveyard and the recent acquisition of the much-praised epic The Brutalist means there is little hope for the movie to take home multiple trophies this season. That’s a shame. Hopefully, like Shawshank, it finds life after its theatrical release and touches audiences for decades to come.
Sing Sing is now playing in limited theaters. Rated R for language throughout.