Sight&Sound - 05.2020

REVIEWS

May 2020 | Sight&Sound | 67

the fear and paranoia experienced by those
involved. The closest filmic reference point might
be Lee Chang-dong’s Burning; Blake himself
suggests he looked beyond cinema for inspiration
to the photography of William Eggleston and
Nan Goldin and even Rembrandt’s canvases,
claims borne out by what we see on screen.
That said, the film’s captivating quality
is founded in the potent screen presence of
its young leading man Conrad Khan, as the
errant son Tyler. Khan convinces as a taciturn,
seemingly benign outsider, but in his East London
comprehensive it’s impossible to lie low all the
time. He gets picked on, confrontation escalates,
and soon teachers and his hard-pressed single
mother are struggling to get through to him. An
introductory framing device has already used
pointed questioning by an off-screen counsellor,
but once we move back in time to explore
the build-up to impending crisis, the story’s
patient unfolding allows us to appreciate the
give-and-take between Tyler and his milieu.
The lack of a male authority figure at home is
significant; so is the fact that mum Toni (Ashley
Madekwe, a performance carefully calibrated
between weakness and strength) works nights
as a cleaner, so that the family’s paths cross
mainly at breakfast. That leaves Tyler with a
perhaps misguided sense that he needs to be
the household’s patriarchal figure, and what
follows is about a quest for status, for authority
and breadwinning opportunities. That’s where
Harris Dickinson’s slick-talking streetwise
‘entrepreneur’ Simon comes in, sizing up the
boy with promises of easy money. The trouble
is that in Simon’s world authority is maintained
by violence, and boyish vulnerability cannot
be part of the equation. As Tyler begins to earn
his cut, delivering drugs to a southern coastal
town, there’s a palpable feeling of doom. This
cautionary tale is heading in one direction

• though the retribution visited on the wiry
  14-year-old proves shocking in its ferocity.
  The film shows profound compassion, but
  little in the way of heaped-on sentiment. Blake
  refuses either to pillory the mother and the
  hassled school staff, or to give any of them a free
  pass, instead concentrating on the emotional and
  practical adjustments that might ameliorate the
  situation for kids like Tyler. There is a maturity
  of analysis here; but the film’s stylistic daring
  turns it from able reportage into a startling piece
  of pure cinema. Colours, greens especially, are
  sickly enough to make your flesh crawl, creating
  an uneasy vision from everyday environs, and
  this defamiliarisation delivers stomach-knotting
  disquiet throughout – amplified by the score’s
  unsettling dissonances. Blake’s framing too often
  seems wider than we would expect, leaving the
  viewer with a cumulative sense of powerlessness
  that, perhaps counter-intuitively, intensifies
  involvement with the material. It takes a lot of
  nerve to hold everything back, as Blake does so
  successfully here, trusting in Khan’s arresting
  presence, by turns pitiful and threatening, to
  hold the attention. It’s a vindication for a truly
  independent production, set up outside the usual
  institutional support schemes, which has allowed
  an exciting, unexpected, unconventional new
  directorial voice to ring out so loud and clear.

Reviewed by Hannah McGill

As shaggy, positive and

inspiring a beast as the

institution it memorialises, this

Sundance opener backed by

Barack and Michelle Obama’s

production company celebrates both the

wayward frolics and the laser-focused activism

birthed at an out-of-the-ordinary American

summer camp. From 1951 until it closed in

1977, Camp Jened in upstate New York provided

an environment in which disabled teenagers

could act up and feel free. Over the 1960s and

70s, this meant not only a permissive approach

to behaviour (at one point, everyone has to be

treated for crabs), but also a politicised culture

that provided a crucible for future activism.

The film is somewhat skimpy on detail about

the camp: how it was funded and run is barely

covered, and with those counsellors interviewed

going out of their way to emphasise their

inexperience, it’s impossible not to wonder how

care across such a range of needs was managed.

Segueing into an account of the campaign for

better disability rights in America, however,

Crip Camp acquires breadth and seriousness

that neither its early scenes nor its playfully

confrontational title suggest. As we follow

erstwhile campers into direct actions, occupations

and unsparing encounters with government

officials, the film’s approach remains anecdotal

and emotional - but what anecdotes, and what

emotion! Footage of a twentysomething Judy

Heumann reproaching Eugene Eidenberg

from the US Department of Health for piously

nodding his head as she articulates once more

the protestors’ unheeded demands feels iconic: a

masterclass in focused, righteous rage. Heumannn,

who would go on to advise Presidents Clinton

and Obama on disability rights, is a figure of

awe-inspiring charisma and determination.

Letting Judy down, another activist notes, was

a more feared prospect than being arrested.

Though much here is angering, or just sad –

many of those we see in coltish youth at camp are

now deceased – co-directors Jim LeBrecht (who

went to Jened) and Nicole Newnham have also

welcomed in a consistent strain of subversive black

humour. This not only keeps excessive solemnity

at bay in their own project, but also pays tribute

to the irreverence that evidently helped to make

the Jened experience so empowering. Many of

these bursts of wit come courtesy of Denise Sherer

Jacobson, a writer with cerebral palsy who met her

banker husband at Jened. Relating her experience

of contracting gonorrhoea from her first sexual

encounter, Jacobson reports being momentarily

“so proud of myself!”, before the troubled reaction

of her doctor to her being sexually active at all

motivated her to undertake a Masters in Human

Sexuality. The film ends with Jacobson back at

the now-empty site of Jened, paying fittingly

salty tribute: “I almost want to get out of my

wheelchair and kiss the fucking ground.”

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution

Directors: Nicole Newnham, Jim LeBrecht

Certificate 12A 106m 50s

Documentary. Set up in 1951 In the Catskill Mountains

in upstate New York, Camp Jened is a residential

summer camp for teenagers with disabilities.

Influenced by the youth movements of the 1960s, its

ethos grows increasingly free-thinking, political and

progressive. Over archive footage, alumni recall their

experiences there. The film then chronicles how many

of them went on to participate in activism that helped

to secure legal provisions for all disabled Americans,

including the right of disabled children to be educated

in mainstream schools, finally achieved in 1973. The

camp is shuttered in 1977 due to financial difficulties.

Produced by

Sara Bolder

Jim LeBrecht

Nicole Newnham

Story Consultant

Denise Shere

Jacobson

Director of

Photography

Justin Schein

Edited by

Eileen Meyer

Andrew Gersh

Music

Bear McCreary

Production

Companies

Netflix presents

a Higher Ground,

Rusted Spoke

production in

association with Little

Punk, Just Films,

Ford Foundation

Executive Producers

Barack Obama

Michelle Obama

Tonia Davis

Priya Swaminathan

Howard Gertler

Josh Braun

Ben Braun

Matt Burke

Raymond Lifchez

Jonathan Logan

Patty Quillin

In Colour

Distributor

Netflix

The rights stuff: Crip Camp

Credits and Synopsis

Available

on VOD

platforms

in the UK