‘When They See Us': Ava DuVernay's Preachy and Manipulative Take on Injustice

You know, there was a time when I used to really like Ava DuVernay — her first two films (“Middle of Nowhere,” and “Selma") are above average depictions of the black experience. But then, I believe, DuVernay became a victim of her own success. You see, the writer-director showed up at a time of transition for Hollywood and, really, just American culture in general. Her ever-increasing presence on Twitter made her more than just a director, it turned her into an important African-American activist for the social media age. I mean, this woman fights. She is relentless in her pursuits and ideals. But when it came the time for her third feature-film “A Wrinkle in Time,” the critics weren’t having it. Based on Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 novel of the same name, ‘Wrinkle’ was a horrendous children-fantasy adaptation which hit DuVernay very hard and you could tell. She all but refused to accept the negative reviews (the film was met with abysmal reviews, a 52 on Metacritic and a 42% on Rotten Tomatoes), and, instead, decided to blame white critics for not understanding the movie because of their own privilege-filled position.

Anyway, this leads me to “When They See Us,” which, even before it was seen, was bound to be raved upon and spoken of highly by critics because, you know, DuVernay-Central Park Five. We already had Ken and Sarah Burns‘ more-than-decent doc (“The Central Park Five”) released just a few years ago, but DuVernary has decided to make a four-part mini-series about the case which dealt with the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, in Central Park, which led to the arrest of five young black men— Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusef Salaam.

This should be a no-brainer as far a pertinent quality goes, especially since, I have no doubt in my mind, DuVernay is still capable of making good movies, but the end-result is rather preachy, a slog to get through. Split into four episodes (60+ minutes each), “When They See Us” has its first two or so hours concentrating on the arrest of the five boys and the subsequent courtroom hysteria that ensued. It’s all rather preachy, pedantic in fact, and is filled with courtroom cliches that were done more pertinently in countless other better movies. The last two episodes are about the post-prison rehabilitation and insertion into society of the five men, all struggling to find themselves after years of incarceration.

There seems to be a total disconnect between Duvernay and her subjects, or at least to my eyes, since the characters feel like laughably cardboard depictions of actual real people. It’s not just the five main protagonists that needed to be more fully fleshed out, the antagonists, which includes prosecutors Linda Fairstein (Felicity Huffman) and Elizabeth Lederer (Vera Farmiga), are so poorly sketched that they may as well be villains in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

The result is incredibly manipulative, especially in its use of music — you could hear violins, not to mention gospel-like songs of injustice, spread throughout its 5+ hours. It’s all a bit too much to take. Overtly stylized to the point of artifice by Duvernay’s too-showy direction, “When They See Us” has had critics put on their beer goggles and praise DuVernay to no ends. It does put into question what the criteria for “good art” should be in the PC age.