Product Description

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and with over $3 million at the box office to date, Capturing The Friedmans is nothing short of the most riveting, provocative, and hotly debated films of the year. Despite their predilection for hamming it up in front of home-movie cameras, the Friedmans were a normal middle-class family living in the affluent New York suburb of Great Neck. One Thanksgiving, as the family gathers at home for a quiet holiday dinner, their front door explodes, splintered by a police battering ram. Officers rush into the house, accusing Arnold Friedman and his youngest son Jesse of hundreds of shocking crimes. The film follows their story from the public?s perspective and through unique real footage of the family in crisis, shot inside the Friedman house. As the police investigate, and the community reacts, the fabric of the family begins to disintegrate, revealing provocative questions about truth, justice, family, and -ultimately-truth. With an abundance of exclusive DVD bonus features supplied on a second disc, Capturing the Friedmans is sure to capture you and pin you to your seat.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55003 in DVD
• Brand: HBO HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2004-01-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 107 minutes

Amazon.com
A Sundance Grand Jury prize winner and a true conversation starter, Capturing the Friedmans travels into one apparently ordinary Long Island family's heart of darkness. Arnold and Elaine Friedman had a normal life with their three sons until Arnold was arrested on multiple (and increasingly lurid) charges of child abuse. Because the Friedmans had documented their own lives with copious home movies, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki is able to sift through their material looking for clues. Yet what emerges is more surreal than fiction: the youngest Friedman son went to jail, the eldest became a birthday-party clown. In the end, we can't be sure whether Arnold Friedman is a monstrous child molester or the victim of railroading. The portrait of a disconnected family is deeply disturbing, either way, and this film is further proof that a documentary can be just as spellbinding as anything a great storyteller dreams up. --Robert Horton

DVD features
Like the film itself, the bonus disc that accompanies Capturing the Friedmans asks a lot of questions, offers a few pertinent answers, and leaves a legacy of mystery in a case that many never be fully solved. What really happened in the basement of the Friedman home in Great Neck, New York? Is Jesse as guilty as his father in the notorious case of child molestation? Additional excerpts of the Friedmans' home movies only deepen the uncertainty we feel after viewing the film, and video footage from two early premiere screenings demonstrates that emotions will continue to run high as long as lingering doubts remain. The "altercation" at the New York premiere is actually rather benign, but only because filmmaker Andrew Jarecki kept the crowd under control before arguments could boil over; at the Great Neck premiere, the case's judge gets a chance to comment on facts that the film omitted while praising its overall veracity. Uncut footage of the prosecution's star witness makes it clear that the case was on shaky ground; even more than in the film proper, this witness (whose face is hidden in shadow) comes off as marginally credible at best, and at worst a vindictive liar, further suggesting serious weaknesses in the prosecution's case.

On a lighter note, "Just a Clown"--the film Jarecki was making when he discovered the true scope of the Friedman story--is a delightful portrait of New York party clowns and their reigning king, David Friedman, whose business thrives as he caters to wealthy Manhattanites. It's clear proof that Jarecki's a gifted documentarian. A featurette about Andrea Morricone (son of the great film composer Ennio Morricone) highlights his creation of the film's evocative score. Returning to the Friedman case, an interactive dossier of Friedman-related media delves deeper into the lives and personalities of this dysfunctional American family, and "Jesse's Life Today" examines the ex-convict's relatively upbeat recovery from 13 years in prison for a crime he allegedly didn't commit. For armchair detectives, an extensive menu of pertinent documents are provided as DVD-ROM content, the most fascinating being Arthur Friedman's confessional "My Story," a psychologist's assessment of alleged victims, and a curiously revealing "Friedman family contract." Taken together, these and other documents add even more complexity to the film's compelling, Rashomon-like study of truth. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Andrew Jarecki's startling documentary offers an approach to truth as richly nuanced but ultimately as futile as Kurosawa's great "Rashomon." In 1987, in Great Neck, Long Island, the police arrested a beloved retired schoolteacher, Arnold Friedman, and his son Jesse on the charge of sexually abusing the young boys who regularly gathered at the Friedman home for computer lessons. Jarecki interviews the police, the attorneys, the judge, and the alleged victims in the case, but the heart of the movie is the family's own footage: the layers of Friedman home movies and stills and the voluminous videos shot by David Friedman, the oldest Friedman boy, throughout the crisis. The two accused men were part of a loving family of five, although Mrs. Friedman, emotionally stranded by her husband, was not part of the jokes and camaraderie. Before our astounded eyes the entire fantastic mess unfolds like a bloody Greek legend-the House of Atreus reincarnated in a middle-class Jewish family. Edited by Richard Hankin. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Absolutely riveting!!
If the Friedman's hadn't been obsessed with capturing their own lives on 8mm (and video tape and audio tape), this riveting documentary wouldn't exist. I won't rehash the case under scrutiny here, except to say that it is pretty lurid, and absolutely not for children to be hearing about and watching.

The amazing thing about the film is that while we are presented with the "facts" of the case, we realize that we're seeing a sort of real life Rashomon. Everyone has their version of events,and as each version is peeled away, we become angry at a different person and sympathetic for someone we never thought we'd feel sympathy for.

For example, at one point we hear the "testimony" of one of the victim's of the molestation. He gets our sympathy, naturally. Later, when we his interviewed some more and we know a little more about the case, extreme doubt is cast on his story and we begin to feel suspicious towards the investigators. But, just as we might begin leaning towards believing in the innocence of the Friedmans, another bombshell is dropped on us. Towards the end, we really don't know who to believe. It's frustrating not to know anything for sure, but by God, I bet no one leaves this movie not ready to spend a lot of time talking about it and running over it in their heads. It is the most satisfying frustration you can have.

The movie is also a fascinating study of the disintegration of a dysfunctional family. We see the collapse right in front of us, and we see its aftermath many years later. Wow! It's simply amazing to witness the things that were capture by the Friedmans.

The movie is occasionally funny, often aggravating, often strong enough to make our blood boil or run cold...but it is never, ever dull. Truly a wonderful achievement...no review I've read captures the unusual power of this film. IT'S A MUST SEE FOR ADULTS!!!!

Haunting and Powerful
Having being drawn to recent documentary features such as Spellbound, I took a chance on Andrew Jarecki's 'Capturing the Friedmans', having heard and read little about it. It is, without a doubt, one of the most compelling and troubling films I have ever seen. I won't re-hash the story as other reviewers have done that already, but would urge you to buy this film. Once the main feature is over you are desperate for more information, more clues and the second disc in the set goes some way to satiating that need.
The beauty of the film, expressed by Jarecki in both his commentary and in a Charlie Rose interview, is that it finally provides - albeit too late - the fair trial that the Friedmans should have been granted. Whatever the 'truth' of the story is, and we may never really know, the prejudice that was brought to bear on the case by the police, judiciary, the community and the media made it impossible for this most complicated family to be accorded their constitutional rights. We, the audience, are the jury now. Jarecki provides both prosecution and defence cases and we are left to decide the guilt.
Quite apart from the compelling material, which makes this film so much more thrilling than any Hollywood drama of recent memory, the film is beautifully shot. Jarecki exposes evidence carefully so that just when you feel that your mind is made up something is thrown in that broadsides you. Andrea Morricone's beautiful music is the perfect accompaniment to the anguish that the viewer feels throughout this painful quest for the 'truth'. The film's website (capturingthefriedmans.com)is a worthy partner to the film with some unheard audio footage, and is well worth visiting.
This is not quite an enjoyable film - the material too uncomfortable for that - but it is one that should be seen. Make sure you watch it with someone as all you will want to do afterwards is discuss it - and then you'll want to watch it again.

My fingernails are bitten down to the nub!
I walked into this documentary not knowing much about the Friedmans, as I was younger when this story surfaced. This high tension story kept me locked in and stressed out!

It always starts the same: the perfect, upper middle-class family. Arnold and Elaine Friedman have three sons: David, Seth, and Jesse. He is an award winning teacher and well liked in the small community. Everything seems great from the outside. But, somehow, a lead to Arnold Friedman stems from some child pornography being traded through the mail, and that led to finding more about this "happy" family. From then on, it was alleged that Arnold Friedman and his youngest son Jesse, then 18, were molesting boys in their basement during computer classes that Arnold taught.

It goes back and forth over the years. Many of the videos were shot by the Friedmans, as the father and sons were interested in using video cameras for their own entertainment. They all seemed to have a similar sense of humor, and were always joking around with each other. The sons seemed to be each others best friends. As the movie goes on, you become more and more aware of who is going to be there for whom. Enter Elaine Friedman. I had such deep sympathy for this woman. Yes, she had problems of her own. But, to have something like this happen to her family, and then, have her sons constantly gang up on her. There also seemed to be a lack of boundries within the family, as Elaine and Arnold briefly touched on their relationship in front of their sons. What I thought was a little strange: At one point, around the time that Arnold was going to court: they practically filmed their own documentary. They were talking about the case on camera. It's as if their lives centered around their video camera.

I constantly found myself wondering, "Did they, or didn't they?" Unfortunately, I didn't get this question answered. I think that everyone is supposed to find their own answers. There was plenty of information through interviews with Arnold's brother, Jesse's lawyer, Elaine, David, and there was also some insight given to Arnold's childhood, and his kids memories as well. The thing is: the story is so balanced as to the people who thought it happened, and to those who thought it didn't. It's possible that your opinion could be biased after watching it, but overall, whether or not it happened, I was sure of one thing. Arnold Friedman had a very definite problem and needed help. Pedophilia is a disease that destroys people, and it destroyed Arnold Friedman and his family.