An American Crime (2007)

There is a delicate balance at play in An American Crime. At once there is a need to demonstrate the abuse heaped upon the unfortunate young woman at the story's center. On the other hand, you risk losing the audience if you dwell or linger on the girls suffering. Writer-Director Tommy O'Haver takes a just the facts, scholarly approach that does well not to linger but in the end fails to connect emotionally beyond  the simple demonstration of human suffering.

Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) was by all accounts a pious, devoted young woman who loved her mom and dad and little sister and never harmed a soul.  When she and her sister Jennie (Hayley McFarland) were left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener) it was thought that they would be there just a few months while their parents made their way around the carny circuit.

Three months turned to four and five and though their parents paid Gertrude 20 dollars a month to care for their daughters, that didn't prevent Gertrude from taking out her many problems on young Sylvia. Initially, Sylvia had bonded with Gertrude's oldest daughter Paula (Ari Graynor) but when they have a falling out, the abuse begins. Sylvia is blamed for all of Paula's troubles and soon finds herself the subject of inhuman abuses.

Director Tommy O'Haver presents An American Crime with an almost documentary seriousness. Managing the delicate balance of not wanting to revel in Sylvia's pain but needing to demonstrate it, O'Haver retreats often to a court room setting where former West Wing star Bradley Whitford is prosecuting Gertrude for Sylvia's abuse.

The court room set allows O'Haver to keep some of the abuse in description rather than having to show to much. The court room scenes are based on actual court records, giving authenticity to the scenes and an extra little emotional punch when you see Gertrude's young son Lester (Nick Searcy) describe not just his mother's abuse of Sylvia but also his own. Searcy's sincere, unapologetic recounting of events is chilling.

Oscar nominee Ellen Page continues to seek the anti-Juno, a role that won't remind people of her indelible, fast talking, pop spewing pregnant teen. An American Crime is certainly far from Juno. Unfortunately, it also lacks Juno's ability to connect emotionally. Page's Sylvia is really nothing more than a demonstrative device. We watch as she is abused and we connect as we would with any child being abused but nothing beyond that. An American Crime fails to deepen the the tragedy by giving us a character we really bond with.

The same sense of demonstration over connection effects the performance of Catherine Keener. Like Page we witness her actions but we don't connect with them specifically. We know this is a tragic situation and that Gertrude is a bad person but what lead her this way. What made Gertrude commit such a heinous crime? An American Crime is good at demonstrating the crime but doesn't venture to guess why the crime took place.

It has to be more than just Gertrude decided to destroy this beautiful young girl. Was she sick? Was she abused? Did Sylvia do something that set off the situation? There is obviously no justification for the crime that was committed but something motivated this crime and failing to ascribe some motivation to it is a dramatic failure.

Near the end of American Crime there is a device employed by director O'Haver that can fairly be called a cheat or merely O'Haver screwing with the audience. I won't go into the details because it may be a mystery to some who see it, but I was irritated by it. It comes down to a series of seemingly important scenes that turn out to be the directors way of filling time and creating false drama.

If An American Crime was so unfilmable that this device was necessary to invent and inject some drama into the movie, don't make the movie. The crime seems compelling enough to me. The device employed is an unnecessary screw job to the audience.

Final

An American Crime is based on a true story from Indiana in the 1960's. At the time it was the single worst documented case of child abuse in American history. The prosecution of Gertrude was a national story and today would likely be the subject of endless Nancy Grace hours and CNN specials. Writer-director Tommy O'Haver connects with this story better than our drive by media likely would but not by much.

His scholarly chronicling of the crime and word for word court room reenactments are better suited to the documentary feature than to the dramatic movie. His approach is too distant. Without the ability to get closer to these characters we are merely left as after the fact witnesess to the demonstration of pain and suffering.