Sing Sing is a triumph of empathy

The prison drama has proven itself to be one of the most versatile genres.

Billy Wilder demonstrated how fire-forged friendships could be formed in the most unusual of circumstances in Stalag 17, Papillon had Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman team up to escape brutal conditions and of course, The Shawshank Redemption solidified itself as everyone’s favourite movie not long after it was released in 1994.

A genre like the prison drama can be split a few different ways; a director could portray it as an unrelenting, awful fight for survival like Papillon or it could try to find hope in the misery like in The Shawshank Redemption.

Everyone can remember that bit in Shawshank where Andy, Red and the boys tar a roof and Morgan Freeman says in voiceover “we sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men.”

Sing Sing is that specific feeling stretched out to the runtime of a film.

For a lack of a better word, Sing Sing is remarkable.

Sing Sing avoids all the prison movie cliches of having inmates asking each other what are they in for or a big scene set in the prison canteen where the newcomer batters someone to establish dominance; the film instead opts for radical empathy.

What the inmates did on the outside doesn’t define them within Sing Sing; it’s about how they express themselves and partake in joy as an act of rebellion against the system that keeps them down.

Set in the real life Sing Sing prison in New York state, the film is a dramatised depiction of the theatre programme that the prison offers to its inmates and how the prisoners find themselves again through the written word.

Sing Sing paints the healing and restorative power of the arts not seen in a film since Dead Poets Society.

It is that radical empathy that will carry this film all the way to the Oscars next year as well as a slot in our year-end top five.

Colman Domingo has been one of the most consistent actors over the course of his career, finally earning an Oscar nomination for his role as civil rights activist Bayard Rustin earlier this year. 

After years of supporting roles in projects like If Beale Street Can Talk, and Euphoria, Domingo has moved into the role of the leading man with ease.

While he may have lost out to Cillian Murphy for Best Actor this year, we have every confidence it will be Colman Domingo walking away with the Oscar this time around.

Domingo carries himself with the gravitas and quiet regalness like the recently departed Alain Delon or Marlon Brando in his Elia Kazan mode.

The truly great actors communicate how they are feeling without saying anything; Domingo is gifted at pulling off that deceptively difficult trick. 

Domingo plays the real life inmate John Whitfield, or Divine G to his friends.

Divine G is the engine of the theatre program at Sing Sing; when he is not practicing Shakespearian soliloquies he is cooking up play ideas of his own.

Anyone who has ever worked in an education setting can immediately identify with his character; no one likes a show-off or someone who thinks they are better than everyone else.

You can see Domingo adjust his performance in real time as he realises that the other inmates aren’t taking the project as seriously as he is, he dials back and becomes a team player.

The masterstroke of Sing Sing is having the real life prisoners involved with the film as much as possible.

Divine G has a story by and producer credit on the film, while fellow inmate Clarence Maclin (also known as “Divine Eye) goes one further and acts alongside Domingo in the film.

Maclin is living proof of the film’s core themes; the arts can change your life.

There is a natural, almost cinema verite quality to Maclin’s performance which makes it exciting to see him outperform established veterans like Domingo and Paul Raci.

Paul Raci deserves a special mention for his performance as the in-house director Brett, and just like his Oscar-nominated performance in Sound Of Metal you just want him to personally tell you everything is going to be alright.

There is a warmth and patience to Raci’s performance that allows him to fit right in with the performance; like all great actors, you never get the sense he is acting and they just happened to have the cameras rolling.

A large chunk of the cast are real life inmates playing themselves, and the naturalism that exudes from the inmates-turned-actors helps Sing Sing stand out from the crowd.

These actors are playing themselves but it doesn’t really feel like they are acting, making the film feel that much more organic.

Sing Sing follows in the Italian Neorealist or Mike Leigh tradition of casting actors who don’t have that much experience in front of a camera and letting them off.

While we have spent the majority of this review praising the cast, it would be remiss of us to forget the heroic work carried out by director Greg Kwedar and his co-writer Clint Bentley.

The film feels so radical and fresh despite the Italian Neorealist genre existing since the 1940s and Mike Leigh single-handily defining British cinema since the 1980s you simply do not see films like Sing Sing being made at the Hollywood level.

The closest frame of reference to Sing Sing within an American context is the films of John Cassavetes; he would be mighty proud to see his tradition still influence filmmakers in the 2020s.

In a year where Deadpool & Wolverine and other franchise tripe stinks up cinemas around the world, it falls to films like Sing Sing to remind us that cinema as an art form is worth fighting for.

Sing Sing is a film that people from all walks of life can relate to; this is a film that would work just as well in a classroom of secondary school students as it would in a screening room of retirees or family film night.

Films like this don’t come around very often; make it your business to see Sing Sing.