Sing Sing: A Beacon of Hope Behind Bars
Movie Review: Sing Sing cheers the power of art inside a maximum security prison
A scene from the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program
Sing Sing follows the well-trodden path of a motley group of amateur actors as they come together to rehearse and put on a play in front of their peers. But this time, it’s different. The movie is set inside a maximum security prison in New York state, highlighting a real-life rehabilitation program that works to offer inmates an artistic outlet.
The premise could easily have turned horrifically treacly or maudlin, but director Greg Kwedar has a firm, no-nonsense but emotional hand. He uses a few too many razor wire-though-the-window shots, but it’s a cinematic high-five to all arts programs behind bars and, in particular, the power of theater.
As a cynic, you might think Sing Sing is an elaborate infomercial for its Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. Even if it is, it’s wonderful. And Colman Domingo, who plays a key part in the Sing Sing theater program, is finally becoming indispensable in Hollywood. He got his flowers in George C. Wolfe’s Rustin, and now deserves a larger bouquet.
To see inmates acting – which requires participants to be real, vulnerable, and honest – isn’t something men don’t get to do too often, says the program’s director, played by a nicely understated Paul Raci.
Colman Domingo shines in Sing Sing
We first find Domingo as Divine G, a one-time Fame-high school actor and playwright, trying to help determine which show they should mount next and who will be onstage. He’s a lot like other actors – a tad vain, self-involved, and reverential when it comes to the craft.
He’s challenged by the appearance of the very dangerous gangster Divine Eye, played fiercely by magnetic former inmate Clarence Maclin, who has a raw poet’s heart underneath all that menace. Taming him to be emotionally open – or at least not bashing in the skull of someone passing behind him, a prison no-no – will take some nuance and patience.
The movie is based on The Sing Sing Follies, a 2005 Esquire article by John H. Richardson, as well as personal interviews with current and former participants. The real person Domingo plays in the movie, John Divine G Whitfield, has a cameo, a nice touch.
Kwedar’s camera is often shaky, and he sometimes has his actors talk in overlapping dialogue, giving Sing Sing a documentary feel. He’s sober about the indignities inside, from random violence to endless lines.
Surrounding these men is a faceless, pityless system filled with guards routinely tossing cells, stern parole boards, and lockdown sirens. The acting program allows individual expression in a world where they are mere numbers in prison green.
The movie’s band of actors – now tired of heaviness after having just done Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream – ask for a comedy and the director dreams up an insane one, featuring ancient Egyptian mummies, time travel, Old West gunslingers, Freddy Krueger, gladiators, and a soliloquy from Hamlet.
The movie’s most affecting scenes are the ones that follow the inmates doing the craft – tender auditions, reciting their lines while doing chores, and working on their characters. Watching them giddy backstage in costume before a show is all of us.
We here to be human again, says one.
The movie’s script is not content with a just inmates-put-on-a-show premise, so it has added some depth – parole board freedom for one in the cast and a sudden death. Sometimes they are clunky touches, and you just want to go back to the scenes where the inmates are bonding and bursting with art.
Sing Sing is a song about how art can sustain us in even the darkest hours.
