Aired on MSBNC

It's Capturing the FrIedmans. And yeah, that was the better film, but this one has its merits too in spite of its luridness.

Apples and oranges, bro. The Friedmans is about the ambiguity and dark side of suburbia, and could very well be a David Lynch or Todd Solondz film in how it balances darkness with everyday banality. Eventually there is some distance left between the viewer and the subjects, which works to the film's advantage: Regardless of whether the father and son are guilty or not, there is an unsettling quality to the film that owes to the sense of unspeakable undertones in suburban life, always brimming under its idyllic surface. The normalcy of the space around a family unit is radically called into question.

This film, on the other hand is more about watching a psychodrama unfold in an intimate space that reveals itself to be imaginary. You have to really get into these people's heads to appreciate the tragic absurdity of what transpired out of lonely people consumed by desire, and the film does precisely that. There is no implied ambiguity as to what happened because this peculiar thing called desire which we are share are already enigmatic, isn't it? That the film reveals the futility of our pursuit for happiness gives it some depth, imo