Ryan McNeil
Sometimes you watch a film and you wonder when you’re going to touch bottom. It hits you over and over until your bruises have bruises. PERVERT PARK is that sort of film. It’s a slog knee-deep through the muck, leaving you with indelible impressions.
PERVERT PARK is the story of Florida Justice Transitions – a trailer park that has been established and houses 120 paroled sex offenders. Besides assisting its residents in keeping the distances needed from children to comply with their parole, the park allows them to continue their counselling, further their education, and try to re-establish themselves in something resembling a true community.
One by one, we hear the stories of these men and women; not their excuses, their stories. The stories they tell of what they did, and how they found themselves doing it are unflinching, sometimes horrific, often tragic, and profoundly challenging.
The film’s very existence achieves something profound: it puts us in the room with a convicted sex offender. It ties us to the chair and makes us listen to them. People who we wouldn’t give the time of day to if they asked- people we’d cross the street to avoid – are staring us in the eye and telling us their stories. It might be a story about how their day has been, or it might be a story about what they’ve been through in their lives. No matter what the story is, the film makes us listen, and in that the film gives these people something so few of us are willing to give them: a voice.
While PERVERT PARK is sympathetic to its subjects, it’s not interested in prompting sympathy. The film repeatedly takes steps to underline that while the people who live in this community have it tough, and might not have found themselves there without a push, that they undeniably have no one to blame but themselves. Even the most sympathetic young man we meet – a man whose only crime teeters on entrapment – even he can only shake his head and admit that the ultimate fault lays with him.
Our society repeatedly fails them, and the system is arguably broken, but those are only the effects, not the cause. About this, the film is crystal clear.
But do you remember that moment in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION when Andy and Red are first talking in the prison yard? Andy mentions his innocence, Red says that he’ll fit right in because “Everyone in here is innocent”? If there’s a polar opposite to Shawshank Prison, it’s Pervert Park. Not one soul claims they didn’t do what they were convicted of doing…not one person cries injustice. There’s something deeply sobering about that, and it’s what makes this film so powerful. For all the stigmas that we brand these people with and the permanence with which we brand them, not one of them ever tries to say “I didn’t do it”.
Who amongst us would have the backbone to continually own-up to something like that? After all, the people who do have that sort of backbone…we have a hard enough time just looking them in the eye.
PERVERT PARK plays at Hot Docs 2015 tomorrow, Monday April 27th – 9pm at Isabel Bader Theatre. It plays again at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday April 28th – 3:45, and finally at Hart House on Friday May 1st – 7pm (official website)
I’m always a little wary about these films – primarily because it may be playing for shock value. But it seems very similar to Louis Theroux’s recent LA documentaries – and one titled ‘Among the Sex Offenders’. Theroux is always very charming and subtle in his questioning, but by his topics of choice – porn stars, westboro baptists, sex offenders – it often feels more like these people are in the zoo – and we watch with open-mouth, when surely we should be trying to see these people as humans.
This one isn’t playing for shock value so much as it is painting a portrait of who these people are and how they got here. One of the counselling session leaders is careful to point out that what they’ve been through may have been the gunpowder, but these people ultimately struck the match.
Still, it’s intriguing to see how they got to be standing on the gunpowder in the first place.
Do try to track it down.
Pervert Park offers an excellent opportunity to listen to a bunch of violent criminals lie, in order to diminish their guilt, for an hour and 15 minutes.
One says he got mad at his girlfriend, drove around Mexico looking for a prostitute for hours and then, unable to find a prostitute, looked for a woman to rape. He found a 5 year old girl and raped her instead. Anyone who has worked with sex offenders knows this story is a lie. To begin with, my guess is that, if one were actually motivated to find a prostitute in Mexico, it could be accomplished. And if one were looking for a woman to rape, that could get done too. On the other hand, if one was looking for a 5 year old girl to throw in a car, drive off and rape, that apparently is possible too. What’s hard to fathom is that this is a first and last offense, as the film implies.
Another man was arrested after his daughter (or stepdaughter) found him masturbating at his computer. Huh? There was nothing more to it? Then, some time later, he was masturbating at his computer again, and his stepdaughter (sic) came into the room again, this time wearing her mother’s panties, and seduced him. He owns up to his part by admitting the he “was the adult” and “should have taken control of the situation.” Kids walk into rooms where their parents are doing sexual things all the time. I’ve never heard of, or experienced, child asking to join in. Where did the child get that idea? Perhaps from him? Maybe they had even had sexual experiences (rape) before. This isn’t even hinted at in the movie.
Another woman claims she had sex with her eight year old son just once at the behest of a boyfriend. That child went on to become a sex offender himself. Highly unlikely after one incidence of abuse. Highly likely, however, after several incidents of abuse. No one even considers that this woman was a multiple offender.
The cause of Pervert Park is a good one. Sex offender laws in this country are draconian and inhumane.
What isn’t good is that the filmmakers appear to think being complicit to a bunch of lies is justified to make this point.
This isn’t a documentary– or if it is, it is an incredibly lazy documentary.
It’s a piece of propaganda.
And one that pretends to confer redemption on a bunch of people without their ever even admitting what they did wrong in the first place. This is fair neither to society, to their victims or even to the violent criminals, who might have been able to find some real redemption had they told the truth.
But finally, Pervert Park is a betrayal not only to the victims who were harmed so much more violently and profoundly than their subjects admit, but also a betrayal of progressive politics.
For the producers of Pervert Park, the ends (a political statement) justify the means (lies).
Just like Fox News.
“What isn’t good is that the filmmakers appear to think being complicit to a bunch of lies is justified to make this point.
This isn’t a documentary– or if it is, it is an incredibly lazy documentary.”
Sorry Mike – I don’t believe it’s the job of a documentation to call ‘bullshit’
Not to mention, even if you’re right and they’re lying about how they did what they did, none of their stories are framed in a way to garner sympathy. Like the group therapist says – they *chose* to do what they did. There may have been a cause, but the effect was still on their heads.
As for your final point, I cannot fathom a reason why a foreign filmmaker would tell an American story to make a political statement.