“Central Park Five” sets out to do exactly that.
But while the TV movie may offer a complex perspective on history, it lacks the power to change it. By most indications (I have only watched some of it), “Dust Bowl” automatically assumes a place in the pantheon of first-rate scholarship that defines Burns’ PBS work. “Dust Bowl,” which premiered on PBS last night and concludes with its second half this evening, contains interviews with 26 survivors of the era. Needless to say, you’re unlikely to find such extreme indictments in “The Dust Bowl,” Burns’ newly broadcast two-part history of the infamous drought and widespread suffering that afflicted America’s lower class during the Great Depression.
READ MORE: ‘The Central Park 5’ On Criticwire Burns and his co-directors use contemporary interviews with the previously convicted men and others familiar with the case alongside plentiful archival footage, including the videotaped confessions of the terrified teens, to make the unequivocal case against a broken judicial process steeped in class and race biases that destroyed lives. Instead, they wound up spending years in jail, only to become exonerated in 2002 when Matias Reyes confessed to acting solo in the crime. The teens, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, faced the NYPD’s Machiavellian interrogation techniques that goaded them to confess to the attack in the hopes that they might face a lenient judgement. The convictions were the result of the infamous 1989 case of “The Central Park Jogger,” when a white woman in her twenties (later revealed to be Trisha Meili) was attacked during a late night jog, raped and left in a debilitating coma. The movie casts a judgmental eye at the New York City Police Department and the city’s prosecutorial system that led five Harlem teenagers to spend their young adulthood behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit.
For that reason, its polemical content stands out in his oeuvre and deserves recognition as his most important feature-length achievement. Nevertheless, Ken Burns is both credited as one of the directors and has been front and center promoting its release, leaving no doubt that he retains a fair amount of authorship over the material. Part of its distinction unquestionably comes from the other names associated with the project: Burns co-directed the movie with his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon the subject matter is partly derived from Sarah Burns’ book “The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding,” released last year.
“ The Central Park Five,” which opens in several cities this Friday, provides a welcome exception to the usual Burns routine.