Sing Sing - Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

 

In 1996, Katherine Vockins founded the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York, creating a program that would allow those incarcerated at the facility to engage in workshops focusing on art, dance, music, poetry, writing, and theatre in the hopes that these programs could help improve their lives. The program has even resulted in original published theatrical works, one of which is at the center of “Sing Sing,” a film detailing the production of a stage play for a group of individuals within that program. 

The film follows Divine G, played by Colman Domingo (“@Zola,” “Rustin”), a participant in the program who’s risen within to become a respected writer and actor within the facility alongside his best friend Mike Mike, played by Sean San José, and the program’s director Brent Buell, played by Paul Raci (“Sound of Metal,” “Perry Mason (2020)”). After production begins on a new show, he finds himself at odds with new member Divine Eye, played by Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin, who seems apathetic to the program. The pair begin to butt heads and nurture their relationship with each other, all while both have parole hearings that will determine the fate of their sentences. 

In case you didn’t pick up on it in that description, yes, Divine Eye the character is played by Divine Eye the man, and most of the cast consists of formerly incarcerated members of the RTA program. Some play themselves and some play fictional characters, but they all bring a depth to this material that strengthens it at every turn. Whether it's a small detail of mannerisms or a definitively different perspective, it adds so much to the little details of the film that make it come alive. 

Domingo is absolutely phenomenal, which almost comes across as faint praise given how consistently excellent, he’s proven to be. He’s almost outdone by Maclin, who not only manages to hold his own against the veteran actor but also turns in an Oscar worthy performance of his own. The pair have fantastic chemistry together, and the entire film hinges on their slowly burgeoning friendship. It comes across so naturally that it almost makes the facade of the fictional film vanish as a result. San José provides ample amounts of comic relief and steals plenty of his scenes, but that comedy never betrays the underlying pain at the center of plenty of these men’s lives. 

Director/co-writer Greg Kwedar (“Transpecos,” “Jockey”) and co-writers Clint Bentley (“Jockey,” “Transpecos”), Maclin, and the real-life John "Divine G" Whitfield put forth remarkable effort in destigmatizing the treatment of these men within Sing Sing and their prison lives in general. This is not the sensationalized portrait of prison life seen in works like “The Wire,” but a deeply humanizing work instead. While the scenes outside of the rehearsal process do a great deal of work in this regard, the sequences on stage do a great deal in that humanization. It’s a double duty of both showcasing how a group like this would approach performing a theatrical exhibition, as well as using that theatrical exhibition to showcase their changes as people. 

Cinematographer Pat Scola (“Pig,” “Monsters and Men”) goes a long way in expanding the life within the compound by constantly flipping between the larger open areas of the rehearsal space and the outdoors yard with the indoor, confined cells and hallways. There’s an almost fish-eye perspective to the indoor moments, adding a layering of voyeurism to the events. It bolsters the idea that the film slowly moves from us observing these men in a place of enclosure to letting them free both figuratively through the arts and physically. 

It would be easy to slap “Sing Sing” with the cheap label of being a film about “the healing power of theatre” and move along, but that would betray the additional level the film is working on. By not only showcasing that healing, but by using the concept to broaden the viewers perceptions of these men, it results in a work that’s about far more than men in prison putting on a play. Gorgeously show, and lead by a pair of excellent, award worthy performances, “Sing Sing” truly sings. 5/5