Director Chinonye Chukwu
Director Chinonye Chukwu with actress Alfre Woodard (left)
CLEMENCY B
USA (113 mi) 2019
d: Chinonye Chukwu
I am invisible,
understand, because people refuse to see me.
⸺Prologue to Invisible
Man, by Ralph Ellison, 1952
A wrenchingly grim morality play that exposes the harmful
repercussions of the death penalty by revealing the banality of prison routine,
where those working on the premises are equally confined behind prison
corridors, and while they’re allowed to go home every night, they’re haunted by
the habitual bleakness of the experience.
Stripped down to a spare minimalism, the film feels prolonged and overly
detached, even hopeless, often losing that essential emotional connection. Largely modeled after Troy Davis, a black
death row inmate executed for murdering a white police officer by the state of
Georgia in 2011, who eloquently spoke directly to the parents of the murdered
victim just moments before his execution claiming he had nothing to do with the
murder and carried no weapon at the scene.
With no forensic evidence connecting him to the crime, the case was
based solely on eye witness testimony, with 7 of the 9 eye witnesses either
recanting or contradicting their original testimony, claiming they were
pressured by the police to identify Davis as the killer, while Davis himself
originally pled guilty, later claiming his confession was coerced under police
pressure. Of the remaining two
witnesses, one may have actually been the shooter, as a second witness heard
his actual confession, but the courts never allowed this into the record,
leaving serious doubts about the guilty verdict. Equally appalling, three previous times his
execution was stayed at the last moment, with Davis tragically forced to endure
the final experience with imminent death a total of four times, which feels
unusually cruel. Opening and closing
with the meticulous recreation of a state-ordered execution, there are
incredible pressures involved with carrying out this act, not only to the
prisoner, but to the medical staff, the guards, the prison chaplain, and the
warden who oversees the entire procedure up to the moment of death. What role does this play in their lives,
especially when it happens a multitude of times, as it’s hard to prevent death
from having such a prominent and significant impact on one’s life, as the
chilling magnitude of the act itself tends to overpower everything else, as
there are families involved, lawyers, public pressures, vocal demonstrators on
the grounds of the prison, news organizations clamoring for access, not to
mention the effect it has on other prisoners, where in their eyes all prison
support staff become complicit with the execution. This film leaves no doubt as to which side of
the political aisle it leans, advocating for the abolishment of the death
penalty altogether, which is what one-half of Americans feel as well, but the
states with the highest execution rates would include Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma,
Florida, Missouri, Georgia, and Alabama, all former Confederate states that
once allowed slavery, rarely apologizing or offering regrets for their former
barbaric mistreatment, historically viewing prisoners (and slaves) as less than
human, undeserving of better treatment, intentionally underfunding the prison
facilities, where there are simply no visible political winds of change in the
foreseeable future.
Currently utilized by 29 states, while banned in 21 other
states, the death penalty for federal crimes was reinstated in July 2019 after
a 16-year hiatus. Despite problems
associated with the death penalty, with the medical profession refusing to
provide lethal drugs for executions and doctors excluded from death chambers,
as it violates their Hippocratic Oath to preserve life, occasional scenarios
have developed with over forty botched executions since the death penalty
reinstatement in 1976, where people didn’t die immediately, resulting in a
prolonged sense of lingering agony due to technical malfunctions. One such case exists at the outset, where an
execution doesn’t go as planned, as they try repeatedly to find a vein to hold
the IV entry, including his feet and stomach, causing excruciating pain, then
the medicine doesn’t kick in, with witnesses present fully aware, sensing a
catastrophe, becoming something of an extreme embarrassment, with internal
conflicts requiring reviews and professional oversight, yet the death row
warden, Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard), behaved in exemplary fashion, as
all went according to plan except the results, as the procedure itself failed,
her twelfth execution in seven years, never really rising to that same
hair-raising level of emotional intensity again. The film is seen through her eyes, as she’s
responsible for all the decisions, carrying out much of the dirty work herself,
which includes a meticulous sharing of the final details with the prisoner
before it happens, taking them through the entire process ahead of time, so
they know exactly what to expect. What
the film reveals is a series of isolated moments, each one painfully recreated
in exact detail, with little left to the imagination, as it takes us directly
into the execution chamber. Williams is
obviously affected by what happens, as it challenges one’s basic humanity to
the core, stripping you bare, under the circumstances, where there’s no place
to hide. The film recalls Boo Junfeng’s Apprentice
(2016), a similar exposé of executions
taking place in Singapore, where the hangman’s attention to details is exact,
with the drama elevated by having such an extreme sense of firsthand intimacy
of an execution taking place. This film
idealizes a best case scenario, where the people involved sympathize and care
deeply about the outcome, as their collaboration with death has an impact on
their personal relationships, which are difficult to maintain, with such an
ominous force continually hovering over them, always threatening, where that’s
something difficult to compartmentalize, as if you could simply ignore it all
by command. Instead it plays out as a
gut-wrenching melodrama, where the closeness to death wreaks havoc on families,
who are never shielded from the pain, finding themselves continually exposed to
further emotional damage. According to
recent reports from Washington State University, the rate of PTSD
among prison employees equals that of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, with
higher rates for women, black employees, and those with more than ten years of
experience. For those working on death
row, the numbers are likely even further elevated, where the effect on staff
for putting a potentially innocent victim to death is immeasurable.
Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, the
result of eight years of research talking to wardens, men on death row and
their lawyers, the film primarily generates empathy, which is an essential
ingredient if one is searching to obtain meaningful social justice. Much of the film’s raw dramatic power can be
read on Bernadine’s face, as the warden’s life is scrutinized from all angles,
from her husband Jonathan (Wendell Pierce), who describes her life as “an empty
shell,” pushing him away, teaching herself not to care, learning how to live
without feelings, becoming somehow impenetrable, yet she can’t sleep at night
and appears to have a drinking problem (and may be having an affair), or the
next prisoner scheduled to die, Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge), who maintains his
innocence, shutting down emotionally, sharing little, but does appreciate
visits from his attorney Marty Lumetta (Richard Schiff), who is himself
retiring with this final case, as it takes too much of a toll on his life. Little background information is provided,
hardly anything about the former life of Woods, so when a rush of new
information is provided on the eve of execution, one feels suspicious of the
motives, like why now, as it feels like a narrative device to build him up only
to let him down in the end, where the crash is that much more dramatically
excruciating. Since so much time is
spent in the actual prison, one should mention just how overly quiet it is,
which is not a reflection of reality, as prisons are chaotic and noisy,
particularly in underfunded, dilapidated, and overcrowded facilities that were
not built to absorb sound, instead reverberating with profanity, loud
conversations, even uncontrolled yelling erupting throughout the day and night
mixing with mechanical noises and the clanking of the iron cells. It may surprise viewers to see a female
warden, as there were none prior to 1970, yet aided by civil rights legislation
they are regularly assigned to both men and women’s facilities, but even fewer
black females, as it’s a position dominated by white men (70%). In the state of Texas, Warden Cynthia Tilley
in Teague has the unique distinction of having had a father in prison that she
visited regularly as she was growing up, but overall, black women comprise only
3% of all wardens, far fewer on death row.
There are studies (Female
Wardens - Academia.edu) that suggest female wardens are more likely than
men to reflect a more caring ethic, like supporting the goal of prison
rehabilitation, more readily accepting suggestions from staff, including
greater input from correctional officers and inmates, while they are less
likely than men to advocate for the reduction of services, programs, and
amenities. However, as is shown in the
film, they are also less likely to seek support in addressing the stresses of
their jobs, which means (particularly overseeing death row) they are overly
internalizing the process, often with negative results, as so much of one’s
inner self gets shut down, as there’s no outlet for those complicated built-up
feelings and emotions. There’s a brief
moment between Williams and the prison chaplain (Michael O’Neill) about how to
best help the prisoner from becoming too overwhelmed by the bleakness of the
systematic routines, but they could just as easily have been talking about
themselves, suggesting state sanctioned killing has an odor of toxicity to it
that’s impossible to shed for everyone involved.
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