Documentaries used to be a fairly bland genre in which the subject matter was documented (thus the name) and the viewer was reasonably safe in presuming what they were viewing to be the truth, more or less. But with the success of slovenly, lying, fat bastard Michael Moore's dishonest agitprop works masquerading as documentaries winning an Oscar for staged scenes of banks giving away guns and raking in millions with the lies that 9/11 was an inside job, and Al Gore's ManBearPig fantasy film also winning Oscar, the documentary has been mostly a tool of Leftists to push agendas under the guise of honest filmmaking.
Into this environment comes the Sundance hit The Perfect Neighbor, Netflix's doc about the killing of Ajike "AJ" Owens by Susan Lorincz in June 2023 by Geeta Gandbhir. Comprised mostly of bodycam footage, we witness the escalating tensions between Lorincz and her neighbors in Ocala, FL as she repeatedly calls the Sheriff's Department over a period of 16 months about the boisterous children in the neighborhood she claims are initially trespassing on her property then becoming more provocative in taunting - or threatening according to Lorincz - "the Karen", as they call her.
The dispute arises because the owner of the open lot adjoining Lorincz's rental duplex, who lives on the other side, has given his permission for the kids to play on his lot, and kids being kids they're loud and annoying. It comes to a head when Owens knocked on Lorincz's door and the latter fired a shot through the door, mortally wounding Owens. Lorincz claims Owens was pounding on the door so hard she feared for her life, but details in the investigation raise questions about her version of events.
What The Perfect Neighbor does well is show the mutual antagonism on both sides of the tension. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango and while nothing justifies busting caps over disturbing the peace, you can sense that the kids with the support of their parents aren't trying to deescalate matters. As deputies are called back, they're familiar with Lorincz's constant calls and trying to chill her out, but she's clearly frustrated; not that this excuses her poor choices.
But where Gandbhir crosses the line into propaganda is an ending title decrying "stand your ground" laws which entitle people being threatened to defend themselves without having to run away until trapped. The card suggests that (paraphrasing) "...white assailants get away with killing Black victims..." with the woke capitalization of black in keeping with the current black supremacist zeitgeist in the wake of St. George Floyd's overdose death near a cop in 2020 which set race relations in America back 60 years.
The reason the inflammatory end title is such dirty pool is because under the end credits we're shown footage from Lorincz's trial for manslaughter which ended in her conviction and sentencing to 25 years in prison, which for a then 60-year-old is effective life in slam. That she had no previous criminal record and a history of childhood sexual trauma didn't get her any mercy in a time where black criminals with dozens of arrests walk free while white convicts are punished severely. Also not disclosed is the factoid found in the movie's Wikipedia page that Gandhir's sister-in-law was Owens best friend and began documenting the case with the expectation the white woman would get away with it.
What such poisonous tactics obscure is the core tragedy of this incidents. While some excessive form of "justice" may've been served, there are no winners. A woman who really should've moved's life is over because of a rash choice she made - somehow left out was that Owen's 10-year-old child was next to her when the shot was fired - and four kids are now without a mother because they chose to antagonize "the Karen" rather than try and coexist. By trying to make it another race war example doesn't cool temperatures, but agenda-driven filmmakers aren't seeking to back off the steam when the money is in stoking outrage.
While in 4K and Dolby Vision, the source material doesn't lend itself to the benefits of the format and paying for Netflix's top tier.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.
0 comments:
Post a Comment