Sing Sing - Review Thread

It’s hard to exactly call the “prison movie” a genre, and yet in some ways it also hard not to call it a genre. On one level it’s more akin to a setting than a true genre, a place where any kind of movie can potentially take place, and yet by their nature there are certain routines that occur in prisons that essentially become tropes through repetition. If it is a genre it’s one with a pretty lock history going back as far as 1930’s The Big House but I’m sure it goes even further back than that. The reasons for people’s interest in going behind the walls of these places from the safety of a movie theater aren’t too hard to guess: these are places that people dread the idea of and are going to want to know what the people in them go through and why such places should be avoided. While there are certainly clichés to the genre there’s still a ton of variation possible with prisons allowing for anything from an inspirational drama (The Shawshank Redemption) to a gangster film (A Prophet) to a sports movie (The Longest Yard) and with the prisons themselves being depicted in all sorts of different ways. The newest entry in this “genre” is Sing Sing which got massive buzz out of TIFF and promised to be among the most serious minded and realistic entries of the “genre,” one that eschewed the usual crime film elements that tend to characterize these movies in favor of something a bit more existential.

Sing Sing is set at the real world prison of the same name and focuses on an inmate named John "Divine G" Whitfield (Coleman Domingo), who is among the leaders in a program that allow inmates to form a theater troupe and put on plays for the other inmates. The prisoners occasionally put on existing canonical plays by the likes of Shakespeare but also sometimes write their own plays or have their theater coach Brent (Paul Raci) write something for them. That’s what they’re doing with their latest production, an original comedy that incorporates various disparate elements and time periods that the various theater members brainstormed. Whitfield and his friend Mike Mike (Sean San José) decide to bring some new blood into the troupe and invite a younger guy named "Divine Eye" (Clarence Maclin) to join up but comes to somewhat regret this as this guy kind of challenges the group’s preconceptions in certain ways.

Sing Sing is probably a bit inseparable from its method of its unique method of creation, which blends fact and fiction in the way that something like Nomadland did. The film’s characters are based on real people and aside from Coleman Domingo and Paul Raci almost all the actors in the film are former Sing Sing inmates who were part of the actual “Rehabilitation Through the Arts” program are here playing themselves. The film’s story basically follows Whitfield as its protagonist and point of view character and does have a story of sorts but primarily exist to peak into this world and give an overview of what this program is like. The movie was shot in Downstate Correctional Facility, a prison near Sing Sing which had recently closed, rather than on Hollywood sets and that makes it seem very realistically mundane in its look and the use of real ex-cons in the cast make the people seem pretty authentic in their look and feel. Clarence Maclin is a clear standout among the ex-con cast with his thick New York accent and general presence every time he enters a room. Of course the heart of the film is Coleman Domingo who plays a guy who’s been in prison for a very long time by the film’s start and has a clear ego about his role as the star and leader of this theater troupe and who goes through something of a journey over the course of the film as he has a bit of a crisis of faith over his role in the troupe and in life.