"Sing Sing" Is a Moving Showcase For One of 2024's Best Ensembles

by Nick Taylor

Sing Sing, the sophomore feature by Greg Kwedar, is beginning its theatrical run in the US almost a year after it debuted at TIFF 2023. This weekend it begins a limited release rollout, culminating in a wide release on August 2nd. Based on a 2005 Esquire article by John H. Richardson entitled "The Sing Sing Follies", the film follows a group of men incarcerated in Sing Sing Correctional Facility who are members of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, also known as the RTA. The development of their latest production comes with the usual stresses of putting a show together along with new disruptions to their membership, their hierarchies, and their routines. If the summaries and trailers and evangelizing reviews haven’t already convinced you this is the real deal, let me add my two cents. Sing Sing is a moving, heartfelt, sometimes despairing film, one you should see with a packed theater if you get the chance . . . .

The most central characters of Sing Sing are John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo) and, to a slightly lesser extent, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (playing himself). Whitfield is one of the most senior members of the RTA, a genial, studied guy who needs the outlet the troupe provides him more than he might realize. Maclin is a new member of the RTA, a guarded inmate who asks to join the group but still struggles with either realizing or admitting how much the theatre could help his life. The two men were also involved in developing the script with Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley, which might explain the additional time devoted to Divine Eye’s upcoming parole hearing and Divine G’s ongoing attempts to seek clemency for a crime he didn’t commit. Whether these sequences add poignancy to the film or divert its attention from the communal support of the RTA is up to the viewer. Along with Divine G and Divine Eye, we get to know about a dozen other men who are either already part of the RTA or new members for their latest production, a time-travel comedy called Breakin’ the Mummy’s Curse.

It’s a rare treat to see a prison film so fully devoted to depicting the humanity of the people we meet. Sing Sing achieves this in part through what it chooses not to depict - there’s no time wasted on prison gangs or corrupt guards or some guy challenging the masculinity of the RTA troupe so the movie can boldface its themes for us. The few glimpses we get of systematic abuses are made more chilling by being so routine. Guards casually tear apart Divine G’s room for a regular search, leaving him to put together the little haven he’s built for himself, and we have to see this preternaturally expressive man shut down completely as a service tactic honed across years of this casual dehumanization. 

We learn only slivers of these men’s lives before they went to jail - I don’t even think we learn why most of them were incarcerated in the first place. Being in maximum security surely suggests these guys did something heavy to get locked up, but Sing Sing mostly refuses to frame these men through the lens of rehabilitation or whether they deserve to be jailed. Instead, we get to know them as people, hear them tell their own stories and see how the RTA allows them to tap into a depth of personality and spirit they can’t express anywhere else in prison. The point is that every human being deserves an outlet to express themselves, something so routinely denied to Black men, to prisoners, to anyone society labels as hard, dangerous, and subhuman. Or to paraphrase one inmate played with miraculous expressivity by Sean Dino Johnson, the RTA keeps them from the ugliness of the world outside their rehearsals. Kwedar follows that sentiment as far as it can go.

Formally, Sing Sing is a solid piece of filmmaking. Cinematographer Patrick Scola, the DP for Michael Sarnoski’s features as well as this year’s We Grown Now, is so good about when to imbue vibrant, saturated color into these men’s lives and when to make prison look monotonous and draining. He’s also quite nimble at making the nuts-and-bolts interactions of group workshopping and one-on-one conversing into their own visually interesting stories, and at lighting Sing Sing to serve the different complexions of its cast. Everyone looks wonderful, and the expressive textures of every face are cared for so beautifully it’s practically making this cast into telepaths beaming their emotions directly to their audience’s brains. It looks great, it sounds great, and it knows how to serve the themes of brotherhood and isolation in cinematic language.

Still, the film’s main talking point for almost a year has been its cast, and for good reason. Colman Domingo is as prodigious as he almost always is, so sensitive with Divine G’s empathy and grace while sneaking in notes of envy and irritation at the edges of scenes where the character feels he’s being upstaged. He’s a generous scene partner, he suggests a deep rapport with the non-professional cast. I wonder if someone discovering Domingo through this performance might be in an even better position to judge whether he “disappears” into this troupe of theatre actors who are just as dynamic and emotive as he is. Some actors even surpass him, namely Maclin’s watchful, grounding performance as himself.

It’s also exhilirating to see a bunch of guys who would likely be boxed in as walk-on inmates in any other film get the opportunity to revel in playing comedy, playing joy, playing softness in an environment that encourages and recognizes the effort it takes to achieve such self-disclosure. Sean San Jose, Sean Dino Johnson, Dario Peña, and Carmine LoVacco are all indelible, working just as hard in the ensemble as they do when they get the spotlight. Walk-on turns from James “Big E” Williams and Sharon Williams are just as detailed, and speak highly to how deeply Kwedar has connected with each member of the cast. Sound of Metalheads will also be happy to see Paul Raci all warm and grizzled and game as the rest of the cast in the role of Brent Buell, the one RTA member who’s involved from the outside and the writer/director of their newest play. If this film has any cultural remit over the next few years, it should be because it helped launch so many unlikely stars into top-billed roles.

Would you be shocked to hear the audience I saw Sing Sing with cheered and cried throughout the whole film? That it hit its audience-appealing beats exactly as intended, with a crowd that was totally ready to love it? Hell, I didn’t even love it when I first walked out of the theater, and hey! Look at how easy it was to say all these nice things about a film that’s really aiming to be a welcome, three-dimensional portrait of Americans this country mostly couldn’t pretend to give a shit about. It’s about as political as a film can get without quite stopping to make A Statement. Instead it just shows us a beautiful, irreducible truth about human beings, one that’s too quickly neglected because of who these people are and how they’re seen.

Sing Sing is currently in limited release, and will be released wide across the US on August 2nd.

Comments

[Gallavich]

So original that I thought it was a remake of Golden Bear winner Ceaser must die

[Cláudio Alves]

This had great word-of-mouth buzz at last year's TIFF. I didn't get to see it, but have great expectations. At the very least, it should be a better vehicle for Domingo than the film that got him the Oscar nomination.

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[Robert Harris]

It got a lot of buzz at last year’s TIFF. I missed it, but I’m excited to see it. At the very least, it should be a better role for Domingo than the one that got him the Oscar nod. papa's games

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