O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016)

[flyonthewall2983]

First look at O.J.: Made in America, 30 for 30's first multi-part episode. The reviews that have come in since it's first unveiling at Sundance have been pretty strong.

[mfunk9786]

Gosh, is there any more obtuse airing schedule than the O.J.: Made In America one? Took me quite a bit of time to navigate how best to set my DVR, because:

ESPN’s five-part documentary special O.J.: Made in America will kick off at 9 PM ET/PT on June 11 on ABC, the two networks said. The first episodic documentary for ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 brand then will move to ESPN for the rest of its run, with Episode 2 on Tuesday, June 14; Episode 3 on Wednesday, June 15; Episode 4 on Friday, June 17; and Episode 5 on Saturday, June 18. Each will air at 9 PM ET and be preceded by a re-air of the previous episode.

Ah, network executives. Always putting viewers first.

[Ribs]

And, to make matters worse, the entire run will be put on WatchESPN after the airing of Episode 2. I don't understand this at all, as I think they've legitimately got the makings to what could be a genuine must-see TV event and they're just scrapping that after the second night.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm going to just wait two weeks until it shows up on Netflix.

[Black Hat]

And, to make matters worse, the entire run will be put on WatchESPN after the airing of Episode 2. I don't understand this at all, as I think they've legitimately got the makings to what could be a genuine must-see TV event and they're just scrapping that after the second night.

That's the thing there is no such thing as must-see first run/live TV outside of sports anymore. Using the show as a vehicle to draw eyeballs to WatchESPN is a smart move as it's the future of the network. Hopefully for their sake the app has improved considerably since I last used it.

[mfunk9786]

Made the executive decision to split this off into a New Films thread - it's been screened in theaters in its entirety for Oscar consideration, and is getting what amounts to the best critical reviews of any film to be released in 2016 thusfar (by actual film critics, by the way). Something tells me the size and variety of the 30 for 30 thread will not make it the proper location for ongoing discussion of this one. Yes, the initial way many will consume it is via television or streaming, but the filmmaker has stated that it's ideally consumed as a [mega] feature-length documentary, so New Films it is.

[flyonthewall2983]

All 5 parts available to stream now.

[knives]

I guess this is the film to beat this year. Certainly as an American film there's no chance of anything better coming along as this examines everything that goes into the country with bright eyes reflecting new surfaces. Still, while it earns that America in its title this is really about the very strange realities of California which is as prominent a character as OJ in the film. It basically plays out like a James Ellroy novel in how it shows psychosis developing because of California which is really the only sensible approach given how, as I understand it, Edelman couldn't bring up the brain damage that likely caused his erratic behavior. The film keeps close to this idea of California being a personification and molder of OJ's psyche. For the most part the story avoids the events outside of the state and when it does the outside is treated as a painful tundra devoid of any true reality. In this dissection of the state the most compelling thing for me is how well Edelman shows the toxicity of mixing Bay area racism with LA racism. LA's mad dog nature is more then well known, but the Bay area as king of the red line isn't as well known. Oakland aside the Bay area puts on a nicer face and could easily convince people of the American dream even for blacks as long as you don't move next store. That means you have to become invisible to succeed in the bay area or as the film suggests OJ tried was to by sheer force of personality make your skin invisible. Of course that's impossible to do in the bay itself, but LA with its magic wand of celebrity can accomplish that. Maybe not consciously, but certainly as the story is told that explains the run to places like Santa Monica. The film remembers though that behind every USC is a Watts. That's why the destruction of the house in the last episode is like a death and the rest of the film plays out like an obituary. Running back, it is impossible to be an invisible man as Ralph Ellison, this film's other literary compliment, would say. LA, this world where dream is reality and vice versa, forces madness. So the dream of invisibility when allowed to be real doesn't let the man stand any more. The film thus has this sense that the murder, I really wish they hadn't shown those photos, was an inevitability because to scrub away his colour he also every day had to scrub away his past and maybe even personality leaving no one left. To fit into the wealthy, comfortable, white world as an equal when you really are not forces sociopathy.

[ianthemovie]

I agree with knives that this is far and away the best film so far this year--hugely ambitious, sprawling, intelligent, and completely devastating. It's rare that a documentary (or any film, really) is able to tackle so many heated issues, many of which Americans are still very much heatedly arguing about today, with such sensitivity and complexity. Never for a second did I feel like Edelman was resorting to cheap platitudes or simplistic interpretations. He is deeply attuned to the messiness, the paradoxes, the hypocrisies, the ironies, and the reversals that criss-cross this story at every turn. Edelman complicates the material slowly and steadily but to almost maniacal effect. At different points in watching the film over five days I found myself in tears, shouting at my computer, and at one point needing to stand up and walk away from the screen for a minute because I was feeling so tense. In short, it's both a crackerjack piece of documentary filmmaking and an emotionally overwhelming experience. Magnificent.

One quibble: even at 7.5 hours, it needs an extra five minutes to wrap up at the end. The ending feels rushed and abrupt. After all that we've seen, we need more than the equivalent of a cliche freshman-college-paper conclusion that amounts to "he had everything and lost everything. His story is a true American tragedy." But compared to how staggering the previous 7.5 hours have been it hardly matters.

[Ribs]

Are spoiler tags necessary for this? I wouldn't imagine so given the trial of the century thing but hey who knows.

SpoilerShow

Anyway, that's not quite how I think the ending plays out - the idea is, yes he obviously became a bad egg and shouldn't have done any of it, but even still the radical and crippling sentencing was still unjust, exactly what OJ deserves only in an America built entirely around White Justice. They had the opportunity to kick the black man when he was down and by god did they take it. I do think a little bit more of a button of some kind may have played better but as of now it's still incredibly effective.

[ianthemovie]

I completely agree--I felt that final ironic twist in the narrative was well-handled. My complaint is about the very, very last bit of the film (as in the last minute-and-a-half before the final credits), where everyone hastily tries to tag on some sort of conclusion to this 7.5-hour epic that defies wrapping up. I wanted that very final note to be more poetic somehow. It seemed to me the only moment in the entire film that felt lazy--but still, 1.5 lazy minutes of filmmaking out of 450? I'll take it.

[flyonthewall2983]

Just finished it today. After being so enthralled with the FX series, I found this an interesting refresher of the events as they went down in real time. One thing that show did, that I felt could have been explored here more, was how the issue of domestic violence and battery was affected on a national scale by the case. Though I was disturbed and enraged enough by the photos and some of the phone calls (the one with him screaming in the background I can clearly remember watching on CNN when they were released publicly).

[bdsweeney]

My wife and I viewed this over the holiday break and we were as astonished by its breadth and detail as most others. I'd gladly consider it as best film of the year.

Even with it completed well prior to how 2016 in the US played out, it (through a thorough and carefully detailed thesis) speaks enormously on a multitude of issues that came into play during the election. (Or at least how it appeared so to an outsider of the US looking in.)

I've heard some minor criticisms of the final, fifth part. But I think it may be the part where the film-making and directorial decisions came most into play, creating some of my most favoured moments in the entire series. The slightly fragmented, frenzied nature of it complements the state of mind and 'unravellings' of the various players well.

It becomes almost surreal; not only in the events that occurred to Simpson himself post-trial but how virtually nobody (including the American populous as a whole) was left untouched or unsullied by the events and how the various cultural aspects of it all have echoed ever since.

Sorry to sound like such a sycophant about it, but I was blown away. However, if anybody can point me to some serious criticism of the film, I'd gladly read it to provide further food for thought.