A Well Done True Crime Doc With A "Cultural Sob Story" Theme.

Iris Shim's The House Of Suh (2010) is an extraordinarily well thought out, and well executed documentary. It obviously required a lot of preparation, research, and the finding and interviewing of the many relevant "witnesses" to the story told here.

Although the film does evoke some sympathy in me for Andrew Suh, the bottom line is that is that he was no weak minded puppet when he committed this premeditated murder. He was an already well educated, articulate 19 year old man who was certainly aware of the world around him, and of his viable choices, and options in life. In spite of the "cultural sob story" that this film so dramatically and so effectively spins for Andrew, he is a cold blooded killer. That he killed Robert for murdering his mother rather than to go to the police to report what his sister told him about Robert, was a moral choice that he alone made for himself. His failure to go to the police because of apprehensions of implicating his sister in his mother's murder was again a moral choice that he alone made for himself.

Although Andrew's sister isn't a participant in this very provocative film, it seems clear that she, unlike Andrew, suffers from serious, long term mental issues, and may even be a true psychopath who had no more remorse in manipulating her brother to kill her fiance than she had in remorselessly manipulating all the other people in her life. As such, the "cultural sob story" related in this story probably is less relevant to her behavior than to her brother Andrew's.

Many True Crime documentaries take the same tack, to varying degrees, that this film does in trying to explain, or even rationalize a criminal's actions in terms of elements in his environment, particularly in his family life as a child. But what all such True Crime documentaries fail to consider is that MANY other people endured the same environmental, and cultural pressures as do the criminals in question without ever resorting to serious crimes. Although there were negative cultural aspects to the upbringing of this brother and sister, they were both well fed, well provided for, well educated, and apparently not the victims of sexual abuse, or severe physical abuse in their upbringing. In short, there are MANY people in this world who have had a far less happy childhood than these two people who NEVER went on to commit murder, or any other serious crime.

Overall, I am still appreciative of this fine example of filmmaking, and I am certainly fortunate to have had a chance to see it. Iris Shim has a very sparse filmography at IMDb.com, which is unfortunate because she really knows what she is doing as a documentarian.