Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Sabin wrote:Powerful post, dws.

Ditto.

I actually started watching the film after reading dws' post. The four hours fly by.

I came to the film with no interest in Michael Jackson. Never liked his music and found his behaviour over the years, as it was virtually impossible to avoid press coverage of him, bizarre and disturbing to say the least. I remember reading that he had passed away and my reaction was of slight surprise and then I just moved on with my day like nothing had happened. Jackson is in some ways to the U.S.(and most of world) what Jimmy Savile was to the U.K.

The documentary takes what I think is one of the best approaches for this kind of material which is to tell the stories in a chronically manner. As the film moves on it becomes more and more disturbing. That, even after the physical abuse of Wade & James, there is much more to unfold as damage of abuse does not stop just because the abuse has. Hopefully, over time other Jackson victims will find the strength to tell their stories publicly - some will go to their graves with their secrets.

Its been a daunting couple of weeks watching TV coverage of child abuse in Australia by a very senior member of the Catholic Church and films and a feature film about child abuse. Just two nights ago I saw Francois Ozon's latest film By the Grace of God, which recently won the second prize at the Berlin Film Festival and without a doubt will be a strong candidate for France to enter into the Foreign Language Category. Its tells the true story of primarily three men who were molested by a paedophile priest as children and their efforts to seek justice. Ozon's film never lets up. It steamrolls along without ever coming up for air and is dialogue heavy with a huge amount of information to convey. Given that he is dealing with a large number of characters all of which he weaves together beautifully and without fuss. Its also quite a departure for Ozon who films are almost always playful and naughty - there is little to be joyful about this though Ozon's straightforward treatment befits its subject matter. And just how the film gets its title 'By the Grace of God' is one of the most shocking moments of the film - there were a large number of audible gasps from the audience when I saw it. Beyond shameful.

Powerful post, dws.

Haven't seen the film yet. Kind of dreading it. I have no doubt it's incredibly powerful. It's just... people have different experiences growing up with Michael Jackson as an icon. For me, the first Michael Jackson I was aware of was the weirdo pedophile. I discovered his music second. My introduction to Michael Jackson was that of a grown man who was accused of molesting children. In retrospect, I was basing this opinion on the fact that he was a strange public figure as well as the media circus that relentlessly hazed the airwaves with cheap jokes... but I never really thought of him as anything else. Every subsequent public appearance made by the man seemed desperately choreographed or unhinged.

As cinema, this is not anything special. When it's not Robson or Safechuck (or their families) talking to the camera, it's mostly standard archive footage, drone footage, etc.

As an account, as a public reckoning, it's one of the most important films of the year. This is a movie that is needed. It's unfair, but the simple fact is that a news article or a tweet, no matter how true or credible, lacks the impact of a person, on camera, sharing their experience. I think of Hannah Gadsby's Netflix special from last year: If I had just read the transcript, I would've thought "Is this a comedy routine or a sermon?", but hearing it from her own mouth, seeing her body language, and hearing her vocal inflections made it a powerful, important experience. It's the same with this.

Men like Jackson were able to do what they did for a lot of reasons, but it's important that these idols be destroyed. Italiano and I disagreed in the Sex Scandals thread when I said that I hoped that Bryan Singer's career would finally be finished by the expose in The Atlantic. Here's the thing: men like Singer, like Jackson, like Bill Cosby, and like Harvey Weinstein are able to do what they do because of their celebrity and because of their power. Kids like Wade Robson and James Safechuck never would've entered Jackson's orbit if he hadn't been the King of Pop. (And yes, they also wouldn't have entered his orbit if it hadn't been for parents who were starstruck to the point of blindness--they failed their kids, and there's not getting around that.) So no, you can't, in my mind, separate the art from the artist in many of these cases. Bryan Singer's history of predation is directly tied to his success as a filmmaker--the two can't be separated. It's the same for Jackson--maybe even moreso Jackson. It's not just that his status as musical superstar allowed him access to kids that he wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Much of his career, and much of his work as a "humanitarian" was really just a veiled ploy to obtain and abuse children: Many of his videos involved recruiting children through audition videos, his theme park was an elaborate grooming place, full of hidden places and alarms to warn him if anyone was coming close to him when he was with a child. He was not just a musician who happened to abuse kids, he was a musician who built much of the second half of his career around making it easy for him to continue his abuse.

After watching Leaving Neverland, there is no question that Michael Jackson is one of the idols that must be destroyed. The truth is that no grown man in his mid-30's has any business calling a child (other than his own) his "best friend", has no business taking that child on tour with him (and away from his parents for days and weeks at a time), has no business having sleepovers with that child. It was something that everyone should've seen but didn't. Jackson cultivated an image of himself as an overgrown child, as someone who was a "pure soul" (whatever that means), as someone living out a childhood that was robbed from him. And the public, in general, was willing to buy this image. And one thing that we need to do, in light of this documentary, in light of Robson's and Safechuck's very credible recounting of the sexual abuse they suffered, is ask ourselves why we were so willing to buy such an explanation. We wanted to and needed to but why? We need to ask why, we need to figure out answers to these questions (and these answers will be different for different people) and we need to take that knowledge and grow from it. We need to take it and ask ourselves what we, as a society, can do to protect vulnerable children. We have idols, we always will, but we need to try harder not to be blinded by them.

This one is going to show on HBO. A cultural storm’s a-coming.

Excellent review from Variety:

https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/l ... 203117883/

4 stars from Indie Wire:

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/leavi ... 202038317/

Very good from The Hollywood Reporter:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/revie ... ew-1179355

A rave from Screen Daily:

https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/lea ... 59.article

This documentary on Michael Jackson is creating a media storm:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/j ... -neverland

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/m ... a6d728957f