Sing Sing (2023)
Directed by Greg Kwedar
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, located about 30 miles away from Manhattan in Ossining, New York, is named after the Sintsink Native American tribe. Like many Algonquian-speaking tribes, the Sintsink were a spiritual people, adhering to a worldview that imbued all living things with a spirit. They communicated their creation myths through oral histories, serving as a moral framework to tell stories of bravery, humility, and respect of all things; including one’s enemies. If Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) were to have a vade mecum or handbook to pass along to incoming members, one has to imagine that the Sintsink tribe’s guiding principles would be all over it. At least that’s what it feels like when seeing John Whitfield, a.k.a. Divine G (Colman Domingo) comes to greet you.
Divine G is the RTA’s creative council, a man incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. He writes his plays on a typewriter in his tiny cell; a cell decorated by books and sheets of poetry strewn on the walls. We learn of his creative past, his dedication to the arts and dance. And as Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing begins, we observe the RTA complete their rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. “No more Shakespere,” says a member of the organizing committee behind the RTA, who, like much of the cast of the film, were all formerly incarcerated at Sing Sing. As the RTA is preparing for a new play, Divine G invites Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin to join the troupe.
Divine Eye embodies many of the traits you’d associate with toxic masculinity. He can be violent. He identifies as a thug and accepts Sing Sing as his home; as where he’s meant to be. When asked why he wants to join the RTA, he responds by citing how attractive the female volunteers are that help with the production. He is a recognizable figure, pieces of me and many of the boys that I grew up with as a child. He carries a knife with him in his waistband because he has to; because to be alive means to survive. And to survive means to accept violence.
You can sense some resentment in Divine G. While initially proposing to the group that his play be their next project, Divine Eye instead suggests a comedy (“I don’t write comedy, I write satire” responds Divine G). The rationale is logical - inmates have to contend with their own personal day-in and day-out agony. Divine G does not protest but gives up the reigns to the RTA’s director Brent (a wonderful Paul Raci), who writes a stage play that takes the team’s numerous ideas and turns it into a comedy gumbo comprised of time travel, Freddy Kruger, Egyptians, and Blazing Saddles. Yet Divine G plays along, serving as a liaison between prison staff and inmates when things get prickly. When Divine Eye is cast in the lead role of the new play, it’s Divine G that gives him the confidence to speak to his audience with conviction.
If this all sounds like your prototypical “finding oneself through art” narrative then, well, it is. Completely. But Kwedar’s film transcends many of the tropes you’d associate with the genre, in large part, because the authenticity of the material, the positively electric performances (both Domingo and Maclin are astonishing in completely different yet utterly persuadable ways), and the film’s commitment to its milieu. The moments of poetry that the film expresses are earned, and given the intense proximity this has to the real lives of the people incarcerated, nothing here feels exploitative. It’s a delicate process, one that almost seems insurmountable in retrospect, yet the filmmakers get there in such a poignant way that I was left feeling this film in my nerve endings.
Walking out of the film, I considered the self-imposed prison of my mind, and why I’ve decided to keep on writing. I remember returning to this website, like recalibrating an old car that has sat dormant in a dingy garage, covered in cobwebs, and restarting the ignition. The feelings I had when I started this again, 15 months after locking it down, were filled with a lot of anger, frustration, and a desire to return to an old way of thinking. I was experiencing a lot of pain and suffering. There wasn’t anything I could do about the pain but my suffering? That was for me to control. The stupid shit I did and didn’t do was precariously close to killing me but I survived it. And while it seemed like a long time, it didn’t lay me out as long as I thought it would back in 2020. I guess I was just surprised, and as a result, afraid. Like Divine Eye, I had to watch my back. I got stabbed a few times and the pain from that made me want to turn away. That just made things worse. And so I let it hurt. I let it hurt all over and did nothing but listen. And only then did my suffering stop.
It’s the guiding principle that Sing Sing inspires to evoke in its audience. Or at least that’s what I was able to extract from the film. Like most great art, it made me value being alive and made me want to share what’s important to me to those that would care to listen. Listen, beloved.