The House I Live In

Released:  October 5^th, 2012

Rated:  Not Rated

Distributor:  Abramorama

Directed by:  Eugene Jarecki

Written by:  Eugene Jarecki

Personal Bias Alert:  loves documentaries, concerned about America’s legal stance on drugs

5.5 of 10

            Is America handling drug use incorrectly?  Yes.  Are the current legal policies clogging our justice system?  Absolutely.  Does an overly simplistic look at a very large problem really accomplish anything?  That’s the million dollar question hanging over the The House I Live In, a documentary that examines the failure of the American political and legal system’s attempts to address drug use.  If the response to this film can be taken as an answer to that last question, then it’s a resounding no.

             The film was seen by few upon initial release but found an audience and some vocal supporters thanks to its inclusion on Netflix, yet any groundswell of political support has remained absent.  Another documentary that was a similar box office dud in 2012 was The Invisible War, which laid out the problems with an equally broken American institution that did manage to spur modest but real change.  The difference between the two film’s responses has nothing to do with one issue being more unjust than the other.  No, the difference lies in the presentation of their arguments.  Where The Invisible War formed its facts into a starkly clear message, The House I Live In mixes the repercussions of the system’s failures in a way that never builds its argument towards anything.  Its main point is laid bare pretty early on with the rest of the movie simply hammering it home.  The fact that this point isn’t even complex and is readily evident to anyone who’s taken a serious look at drug laws in America makes the whole film feel a bit pointless.

            A pointless film, documentary or not, is one that’s primed for drag, and The House I Live In does, at times, feel like its dragging its feet.  It circles around the same arguments a bit too long, brings in a few too many experts to make its points, and relies far too much on talking head interviews to present its ideas.  This overreliance on a rather uncinematic style of storytelling adds no flavor to the film and shortchanges the interviewee’s points.  Documentaries give you the opportunity to present an argument and illustrate it at the same time, but director Eugene Jarecki didn’t bother with any of that.  Perhaps he thought the facts would speak for themselves, which they do, but even the best laid arguments can put someone to sleep.

            For all its presentation flaws, The House I Live In remains worthwhile viewing if you are at all interested in learning about America’s relationship with drugs.  It’s a well-researched piece, covering the history of legal and illegal drug use in the country while giving it socio-economic context.  To ignore the relationship between such factors would be a disservice, and it’s here that Jarecki finally doesn’t oversimplify things.  He avoids making it out to be solely a race issue and examines both the historical factors that have led large groups of people to join the drug business and why the ‘war’ on drugs has become such an ingrained part of American culture.  This makes for a rather broad, sympathetic look at street level drug business, but it ignores the next level complications that might mess up his purposefully tragic picture.

            The evidence Jarecki presents certainly makes his tragic portrait seem valid, but it also seems that Jarecki himself may have gotten lost in the darkness.  The picture he paints is almost hopeless, offering no the audience no viable avenues out.  Instead, there’s an attempt at the end to make fire and brimstone proclamations that must have been intended to jar the country off its current path.  The reach goes a bit too far, though, and the more outrageous statements are retracted a few breaths after they are issued.  With seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel, audiences are more apt to leave this documentary feeling defeated instead of aggravated, which, according to Jarecki’s own argument, will only make the situation worse.

Other Notes:

Ø  I know it’s unhip to admit this, but I’ve never seen The Wire, so I didn’t care when David Simon appeared.

Ø  It really was unnecessary for Jarecki to insert himself into the story.

Ø  This won the Grand Jury Prize:  Documentary at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.  It’s yet another indication that Sundance isn’t to my taste.