FILM REVIEW: "Sing Sing" is a conventional but convincing character study of hope and redemption
Where many prison dramas follow characters as they struggle to break out, Sing Sing explores protagonists’ struggle to break in… to themselves. The titular Sing Sing correctional facility is the perfect literal backdrop and narrative vehicle for its message. It’s a place that contains and represents the systemic failure to rehabilitate society’s most maligned members. It is the end of the line, where Men are expected to accept themselves as the crimes they committed (or in some cases, didn’t). Yet between the chainlink fences and the tunnels of barbed wire, hope remains. As the cinematography suggests, it comes in many forms and can sometimes only be seen up close (like the recurring symbolic finch), or from a certain vantage point (like the mismatched water towers).
Colman Domingo expertly plays Divine G, a long-time inhabitant of Sing Sing and the real ex-con upon whom the story is based. The rest of the cast are part of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), the real foundation upon which the hope of many incarcerated people still balances. As such, the film grounds itself with the use of real-life members of the RTA, getting a chance to tell their own story alongside the film’s narrative. The most central and most inspiring of these performances comes from Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin. He plays, like many of the cast, a character based on his own experience behind bars. The naturalistic truth of these performances imbues the movie with a special warmth, to match the 16mm film it was captured on.
The soundtrack is equally warm, and guides the audience across the larger time-skips of the 6-month story. The production design is flawless and creates such a juxtaposition between the prison’s glum sterility and the lived-in charm of the old theatre. It’s worth noting that if such a thing as Oscar-bait can exist, Sing Sing does feel geared toward it. Regardless, the performances are the main attraction for this film. The raw enormity of the feelings on screen are undeniably moving, and I found myself teary-eyed at a few points throughout. Aside from a few unexpected turns, it does not delineate from the arcs that it establishes in the first 30 minutes. Then again, not every film needs to be Tenet.
