The Art of Criticism: Two Ways to Look at It : Is It Excessive? Yes, but That’s the Point

Kenneth Turan’s somewhat snide and rather bitter comments on “Murder in the First” take the film to task for its excesses. “As overwrought and in-your-face as possible,” says the reviewer (“ ‘Murder in the First’: Exercise of Excess,” Calendar, Jan. 20). By implication, Turan seems to believe that the excessiveness of the presentation damages the whole picture (“anything worth doing, this film believes, is worth overdoing”).

While I, too, was put off by the film’s pretentious technique, I was impressed by the fact that, while the story deals with an event that occurred more than 50 years ago, it is as contemporary as this week’s headlines.

In a column on the very same week that Turan’s review appeared, Peter King documented the treatment of prisoners at Pelican Bay Prison. Prisoners were “locked in metal cages the size of telephone booths,” “Tasered and pistol-whipped” for refusing to return a food tray, “restrained with handcuffs and leg irons . . . and left on the ground for hours,” and a mentally-ill inmate was held “in a whirlpool tub . . . with temperatures . . . 140 degrees.” And all of this happened not 50 years ago, but in 1994. It took a federal judge’s ruling to put a stop to this inhuman treatment.

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Through the ages, artistic works have frequently taken the inequities of one period to comment on their own contemporary situation. Shakespeare’s history plays describe monarchs who reigned hundreds of years before his time, but the plays are often thinly veiled criticisms of the ills of Elizabethan England.

Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein set their tales in the future, but most often they are making highly pointed social statements about our own time. Two recent films do likewise. “Queen Margot,” though set in France in the Middle Ages, is an effective comment on religious intolerance and most applicable to today. “The Madness of King George” illustrates the political intrigues of 18th-Century England--but vicious political infighting is as real now as it was then.

We live in a time when social sensitivity and basic humanity to one another seem to be taking a back seat to a doctrine of individual blame and the onus of total personal responsibility--no matter what the circumstances or other causative factors.

The current concept is to expect people to rise above years of deprivation and abuse--as if it never happened. “Three strikes and you’re out” is convenient when we don’t know what else to do about crime--even if the third “strike” is stealing a piece of pizza, as our current news reports tell us. Interestingly, in the film, Henri Young (Kevin Bacon) ends up at Alcatraz for stealing $5.

As a film, “Murder in the First” has its share of problems, but its message is of the utmost importance.

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We are a people who have always prided ourselves on our humanity and social consciousness. Many of our institutions have been put into place for that very reason. But all around us we see evidence of the opposite: groups who violently attack others who happen to differ with them; vicious assault--even murders--in the name of religion or dogma.

Audiences need to be made aware of these acts of inhumanity most especially when committed by those we’ve authorized to act on society’s behalf. “Murder in the First” is excessive. But so was the treatment at Alcatraz 50 years ago, and so was the treatment at Pelican Island in 1994. Constant public awareness is necessary to act as a preventive force against potential excesses.

The press and the movies can both do their part to contribute to this awareness.