Sing Sing

Despite getting off to a very slow release rollout by A24 films, Greg Kweder’s Sing Sing should find its audience due being a genuine crowd-pleaser that avoids being manipulative or heavy-handed. It’s  a powerful, absorbing drama, explores themes of the power of artistic expression, the healing power of collaboration, and the flaws of the criminal justice system with a towering sense of empathy and grace.

Inspired by John H. Richardson’s The Sing Sing Folies, which is about a prison theater production that puts on a time-traveling comedy titled Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, which originated in the Sing Sing correctional facility in New York State. The film is much different than most prison movies, and that is because it is more interested in exploring human vulnerabilities than the gritty cliches associated with prison violence and abuse that we have gotten from many other films about prison. The film avoids being heavy-handed as well, and its primary focus is more about the power of artistic collaboration.

Courtesy A24 Films

Colman Domingo delivers an electrifying performance, one of naturalism and dignity. He plays real-life former prisoner John Whitfield, whose nickname is “Divine G.” The rest of the cast and characters are made up of non-professional former convicts who are playing themselves. The result is naturalistic and brings a raw realism to the film that never feels off-kilter. We observe Divine G as a broken man who continues to stay strong by producing and co-directing annual plays in the prison’s RTA program for other fellow incarnated people. After wrapping Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the rest of the committee decides to venture into a more original work. A time-travel musical comedy titled Breakin’ The Mummy’s Code that features Hamlet, cowboys, gladiators, mummies, and somehow Freddy Krueger. After noticing a fellow inmate named “Divine Eye” (Clarence Maclin) domineering another imamate, Divine Eye informs Divine G that it was an act to showcase his acting skills to be in the RTA program. Divine E ends up auditioning for the lead role of Hamlet and ends up getting the role.

The production is also led by volunteer director Brent Buell (Paul Raci), who empowers each of the inmates to find their inner vulnerabilities that have been repressed within. He guides them in how unleashing these emotions will sharpen the authority of their performance, and the result is graceful. Brent and G end up having challenges with Eye, who ends up facing severe anger issues and struggles with soliloquys and grows distant from the play. This causes some tension between G and E, which leads to them opening up with their internal grievances and traumas. The rest of the supporting cast are the cast members that are formerly incarcerated prisoners that were part of the RTA program. The outcome is never wooden by the non-professional actors but feels organic, simply because they were all trained as actors.

Courtesy A24 Films

What Sing Sing is about is the healing power of acting and collaboration. Divine G and Dive Eye have a slow and inward attempt at friendship, and they both have burdens in their hearts that need to be cast. They both are passionate about creating, but their complexities bring many challenges within and to the next production. Both men can sense each other’s anger. They both push themselves, and they begin to emotionally fall apart to pieces, falling into a state of emotional turmoil. It shows the emotional journey of these inmates and examines how something so artificial like that leads to these men discovering unanticipated emotional truths. The acting and rehearsals are just fragments of bottled-up emotions.

Subsequently, the film is not only successful on a dramatic level but on a technical level as well. The film’s aesthetics and natural lighting match the emotional rawness and the confined world these characters inhabit. Dramatically, the film is always in focus. It’s also a film that feels deeply personal, as it reveals the theater subculture in prison that many films haven’t explored before. Greg Kweder has created this world from the inside out, seeing it through the eyes of these inmates and it resonates with authenticity. Sing Sing is, all the time, quite a risk, and it shines through as an extraordinary effort. You will walk away with an even greater understanding about acting strategies, theater, and the creative process. You will walk away with even more compassion and a bigger heart.

SING SING Is now playing in limited theaters