My problems with this movie...

I agree with your post and would like to add that sadly the documentary wasn't very well made. It reminded me of a college project, and was signposting so much it was ludicrous. For example, the orchestral, sweet music playing whenever the family & friends gave their declarations of love to the Bagby's compared to (as you rightly pointed out) the sinister music played whenever Shirley appeared.
An important movie but as art it stank.

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Duty Now For The Future

I agree with you, but I've seen very, very few documentaries that were totally unbiased. The first clue that this isn't one of them is the title.

The fact that you seem to be under the impression that somewhere out there is a documentary that had absolutely no bias makes you either naive or pretentious, and by the time you use Capote as some sort of attempt to condemn people who condemn sociopaths makes me want to go with the latter.

By your "logic," people who call anyone from Hitler to a serial killer monsters have adopted the same mentality is beyond ridiculous. If your so certain of your conclusion instead of reading Capote, you would be researching the life of this film's antagonist, so you could show what made her life above condemnation. Instead you try to present Truman Capote as someone who wrote words that are above reproach.

Maybe you should start with Camus, or someone concerned more with humanity than book sales.


This is not an exit.

It's not a "documentary" because it was never DESIGNED to be a documentary.

It's a memoir of one amazing person--Andrew Bagby--which because of the timing of it's initial production CO-INCIDENTALLY DOCUMENTED the unfolding one of the most egregious sets of of judicial and social work agency errors anybody in either the US or Canada has ever been witness to. The only case I can think of that even approaches the horror of what happened here is the Josh Powell case, in Washington.

It's not a documentary.

It's more important--and more effective--than that. It's hard evidence of just exactly how badly skewed our societal perceptions of "right" and "wrong" have become--when the "parental rights" of an accused murderer trump the safety and well-being of innocent children, it's seriously time to rethink how far the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" should be allowed to be taken.

Here's the key difference: some people recognize what they percieve to be evil/madness/worthlessness in another human beings and point it out to other human beings. They may even think or fantasize about harming that person but that's as far as it goes. Others see those same things and take it upon themselves to act upon their judgement, putting their rage or hurt above another person's right to exist. I hope you can see the difference.

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The movie's subjectivity doesn't make it any less of a documentary than Capote's objectivity makes his novel less fictitious. I can't think of one documentary I saw that was truly objective. In fact, most documentary are made because of some cause that the movie-maker wants to promote.

Thanks for posting this, as now I don't have to.