There is no shortage of messages here. “Prison is a state of mind; the walls, the bars, the locks, the barbed wire,” is the upfront one, direct from director Sananjit Bangsapan. But then the leading lady boasts that ‘Stoicism overcomes all’, and others’ stories remind us that ‘One doesn’t have to be in prison to be imprisoned’. Or for life to be tough, for that matter. And finally we’re cautioned, by one who should know, that ‘Sex causes trouble’. So many messages! So little consequence. (more…)
Posted on November 13th, 2013 at 8:39 pm. Updated on August 28th, 2019 at 8:01 pm.
Revenge is a dish best served cold, it is said. Or in this case, a banquet.
(more…)
Posted on October 17th, 2013 at 9:33 pm. Updated on October 17th, 2013 at 9:33 pm.
Dr Esmat Rushdi (Nour El-Sherif) is a new male social worker in a juvenile prison for girls. The prison bears a wonderfully euphemistic name – The Foundation of Social Care for Girls – and Dr Esmat, who has a doctorate in social psychology, is intent on making it a paragon of reformist endeavour. Now, I don’t know nearly enough about Egypt in the mid-70s (or now, for that matter), but I suspect things may have changed there since this film was made. There is not a hijab to be seen. Dr Esmat sleeps in the same building as the girls; they enter his unlocked bedroom door at will, and he is similarly able to enter the girls’ dormitory through an unlocked door at any time (and does). He regularly caresses the girls’ faces, or strokes their hair, and is wont to telling them that he loves them (mostly like a brother). Viewed almost 40 years on, it seems a rather unusual approach.
(more…)
Posted on October 4th, 2013 at 9:30 pm. Updated on October 4th, 2013 at 9:30 pm.
I’ve watched lots of prison movies; lots of similar stories and similar themes. But none, I think, quite like this. (more…)
Posted on September 28th, 2013 at 10:30 pm. Updated on September 28th, 2013 at 10:30 pm.
“State Prison wasn’t like any other institution in the country. It was outmoded and backdated… a sort of female Devil’s Island. A bleak prison with swamplands on all sides, smouldering with tension that festered under rules of discipline that hadn’t changed in the past hundred years. A hell hole that God and the public had forgotten.” So says Jeff Darrow, or maybe Jeff Darrell (Tom Drake), asked by the new Governor to report on prison conditions and treatment. Notwithstanding this ridiculously overblown introduction, the Bayou Reformatory for Women seems much the same as any other movie prison with spiteful guards and a toughish regime. (more…)
Posted on September 25th, 2013 at 10:16 pm. Updated on September 25th, 2013 at 10:20 pm.
“Few institutions invented by men are so obviously unsuccessful as prisons,” Christian Broda, Austrian lawyer and politician, is quoted as saying at the very end of Fleischwolf. It is a short film, just 70 minutes, with most of it dedicated to proving the aptness of Broda’s conclusion. (more…)
Posted on September 19th, 2013 at 10:32 pm. Updated on September 19th, 2013 at 10:36 pm.
Unchained is the story of one man’s struggle – with the unerringness of his belief that he’s always in the right, and against the temptation to escape. But it is (or was) also an opportunity for America’s first major minimum-security prison at Chino (the California Institute for Men) to showcase itself – and its first warden, Kenyon J Scudder, on whose book Prisoners are People the film is partly based. (more…)
Posted on August 29th, 2013 at 10:45 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2013 at 10:55 pm.
“Molly, no girl goes on fighting the world just for the kicks she gets out of it. There’s always a reason. In your case, it could be something that happened in your early life,” proffers Superintendent Norma Calvert. “I never got over being born,” Molly says drily. (more…)
Posted on August 18th, 2013 at 3:06 pm. Updated on August 18th, 2013 at 3:06 pm.
The Koreans seem to specialise in tear-jerking prison films featuring children and executions. Well, this one and Harmony (2010); it’s not a big field, admittedly. (more…)
Posted on August 13th, 2013 at 10:47 pm. Updated on August 13th, 2013 at 10:47 pm.
If you were a reporter who had gone undercover to expose brutality on in a chain gang, do you think that you’d be at all keen for your editor to publish stories and photos – that can only have come from you – while you’re still working in the prison? Not hugely keen, one suspects. (more…)
Posted on August 3rd, 2013 at 11:01 pm. Updated on August 3rd, 2013 at 11:23 pm.