One of the core tenants of Ava DuVernay's filmmaking is her ability to transport the viewer directly into history. Under her directing, the works of Ava DuVernay have an ability to bring you into the past to a harrowing degree, as most notably seen in one of the most emotionally devastating scenes of Selma where Martin Luther King Jr. meets with a man whose son was just killed in a racist hate crime. It's an intimate scene and one where DuVernay captures it with such a raw quality that lays out the emotions of the characters bare that you feel like you're in that same room with that grieving father and Martin Luther King Jr. DuVernay's works like Selma, The 13th or her newest directorial effort When They See Us explore people of color dehumanized in their own eras of American history and proceed to make cinema about those same individuals so powerful that we're right there next to them in their moments of joy, in their struggles and in their humanity.
When They See Us is an expansive narrative taking place over a decade of time chronicling five black teenagers falsely accused of raping and leaving for dead a female jogger in Central Park. The five boys are Kevin Richardson (Asante Black as a child, Justin Cunningham as an adult), Antron McCray (Caleel Harris as a child, Jovan Adepo as an adult), Yusef Salaam (Ethan Herisse as a child, Chris Chalk as an adult), Raymond Santana (Marquis Rodriguez as a child, Freddy Miyares as an adult) and the oldest of the group, sixteen-year-old Korey Wise (played solely by Jharrel Jerome). All of them are forcibly interrogated by New York City investigators and detectives, including Linda Fairstein (Felicity Huffman) who manage to coerce them to admit they committed a crime that they all swear they never did.
Innocent lives pigeonholed solely by the color of their skin are used as a scapegoat for this hideous crime and When They See Us shows the effect this had on the five lead characters and their extended families. From when they're first dragged into a police station where they're physically and emotionally tormented to say what officers want them to what their adult lives are like once their prison sentence ends, When They See Us uses its extensive runtime to deftly explore each and every corner of both the immediate and long-term effects of the horrors these five individuals have endured. This means that DuVernay's gift as a director for placing the viewer right into the circumstances of on-screen characters is put to exceptional use here, especially since she makes the moments of hope or poignancy as vividly realized as moments of anguish.
Perhaps the most effective of these moments of poignancy is the recurring beat of showing male characters engaging in hugs with other people, including other male characters. It's a simple beat, but an important one for a myriad of reasons. Most notably, it serves as a brilliant way to counter the picture painted of these five characters by the likes of Linda Fairstein or Donald Trump as just vicious primal monsters, a picture echoing how black men have frequently been portrayed as savage beasts that white women especially must watch out for throughout the years of American history. DuVernay's camera delivers a stirring rebuttal to this stereotype by allowing all five lead characters the chance to frequently share hugs and other acts of quiet emotional connection with other people.
Fairstein and so many others in this film simply see vicious dehumanizing stereotypes while DuVernay's choice to emphasize the figures known as The Central Park Five in moments of emotional intimacy demonstrates that she sees them as human beings. Beautifully filmed moments that get inside the heads of these characters, namely a melancholy fantasy moment of a solo trumpet performance heart-breakingly juxtaposed against the five boys being found erroneously guilty, are similarly powerful indicators of just how well When They See Us depicts the humanity of its lead characters. An emphasis on palpable humanity doesn't just run through DuVernay's direction though, this quality is also evident in the outstanding writing on display throughout this production.
Aside from some occasional flashes of clunky dialogue and one or two subplots that could have been fleshed out more, the otherwise remarkable script sees DuVernay and her fellow four writers (among them Robin Swicord and Attica Locke) finding effective ways of communicating how Kevin, Antron, Yusef, Raymond and Korey feel about every step of the tragedy they're embroiled in. This is especially apparent in the section of the story that focuses exclusively on the prison sentence of Korey, the only one of the five sent to an adult correctional facility. Korey's time in incarceration is a relentless assault of misery that soon sees him in solitary confinement. Scenes centered on Korey's mental turmoil separated from all other human beings are among the most haunting in the production as voices from the past run through his head while he clings to visions of his past home life, specifically his close relationship with his sister, in the middle of all this despair.
This portion of the story sees Jharrel Jerome delivering what may be the very best performance in this sprawling enterprise. There isn't really a dud performance to be found here in the mammoth cast of When They See Us, but Jerome's ability to portray how Korey changes over the course of his extensive prison sentence while still demonstrating him consistently clinging to some kind of hope is an especially astounding achievement in terms of acting. It's especially impressive given how isolated Jerome's character is for much of the story, in many scenes, the actor has little in the way of props or other actors to work with yet he still captivates you with ease. Scenes that cut between Korey's time in prison with flashbacks to earlier times in his life, with Jerome portraying both vastly different versions of the character, only serve to reinforce what a marvel this performance is.
Among the other most notable supporting performances have to be both Asante Black and Justin Cunningham's depictions of Kevin Richardson, which feel appropriately like two pieces of a larger human puzzle, while Niecy Nash impresses with a dramatic supporting performance that's totally a 180 from her previous work as a performer. Of course, these performances barely scratch the surface of how many noteworthy performances can be found in the expansive storytelling of When They See Us, a production that allows actors the chance to flourish as performers. More importantly, however, is that it allows DuVernay to use her transportive skills as a filmmaker to tell an impressively sweeping story that showcases the humanity of five men who got their humanity pushed under the rug by a corrupt justice system.
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