It’s not too often that a good film is able to endure its
production and marketing stages without someone hanging around its
neck a petty, misleading phrase that in some way trivializes or
exaggerates its essence in an attempt to sell it to moviegoers.
Amelie, with the tagline, “She’ll change your life,” would
be one exception.

Another would be Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the
Friedmans, a documentary that opened at the Tivoli in July.
It’s about a minor child pornography bust in Great Neck, Long
Island, that escalated into a child sex abuse scandal.

Whether any of that abuse really happened–or if it was
outrageous as police alleged–is the subject of nearly two hours of
interviews with more than a dozen people involved.

By the end of this skillfully reported account, the only
tangible conclusion is the simple tagline with which the movie
began: “Who do you believe?”

Where the problems themselves even began becomes increasingly
hard to determine, but the point of exposure was an FBI
investigation into Arnold Friedman: teacher, husband, father of
three boys and, apparently, a collector of child pornography.

In the late 1980s the FBI arrested Friedman, and after
discovering he and son Jesse also taught an after-school computer
class for neighborhood children in his basement, began interviewing
those children to determine whether or not Friedman and Jesse had
sexually abused them as well.

The night of the arrest and subsequent search of the house,
captured by local television footage, is the only moment in which
the truth it clear: We see police seizing the magazines from
Friedman as one by one shocked family members arrive–wife Elaine
was at the store and sons David, Seth and Jesse were living away
and at college–for what was set to be Thanksgiving dinner.

The moment there is mention of actual abuse everything begins to
fracture.

Probably the most interesting take on the case comes from Debbie
Nathan, an investigative journalist who has researched the hysteria
associated with child sex-abuse allegations. Hers is one of the
most sound voices. And her analysis is the best explanation for the
Friedman’s problems–if you believe that there was no abuse.

The moment police began interrogating potential victims, a kind
of reluctance to deny abuse took over many of the families. One
father who claims nothing ever happened to his son says that Great
Neck’s competitive vibe infiltrated the case and made parents want
to compete over whose child was abused more often. In some cases,
one gets the impression, the police wouldn’t take no for an
answer.

What becomes the heart of the problem, though, is the brittle
family that crumbles with the added weight of the scandal. But it
is obvious that momentous collapse had almost nothing to do with
the media or the accusations and almost everything to do with a
group of people who had long ceased to trust each other.

And it is outside the courtroom where the truth really lies.
Where the accounts of investigators and attorneys are helpful it is
through home movies–Arnold seems to have a camera in place of his
hand–and present-day interviews with family members that Jarecki
truly captures the Friedmans

In the many family debates (which son David taped) over the
proper legal approach, Elaine–when she is allowed to speak–is
treated as a traitor. It is not hard to believe her when she says
that the boys and her husband had their own gang of pranks and
inside jokes, and she wasn’t welcome in it. When she voices
criticisms, it is clear she has seized her moment to cut her loses
and scrape up the last of her pride.

David, the eldest, leads the charge against her. Except for a
moment when he concedes that his father may just be crazy, he
otherwise defends Arnold at telling when he reads from his father’s
memoir a stark admission that he had sexually-abused children
before he moved to Long Island — then reacts by saying it’s vague
and doesn’t prove anything.

Exhaustive as the film’s digging is, each exposed lie leads to
another exaggerated account or teary admission of a previously
unmentioned sin. Hysteria rules, then calm evaluation, then genuine
shock.