Sing Sing is a movie that does a lot of amazing things, but perhaps the most amazing thing it does is make audiences wanna hang out with prisoners.
Set in New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility, the movie takes the viewer up close and personal with some talented incarcerated folks. These guys are members of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a real-life program in which hardened criminals become thespians and put on staged productions. Serving as the troupe’s glue is Divine G (Colman Domingo), a playwright and novelist who could put members of the Royal Shakespeare Company to shame with his classical acting.
After turning out a successful production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the boys put on an original, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink farce, penned by their resident director (Sound of Metal Oscar nominee Paul Raci), that features time traveling, Egyptians, cowboys and even Freddy Krueger. There’s also a Hamlet, played by new addition Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin), a hotheaded drug dealer who has trouble letting his thug guard down among these creative, vulnerable brothas.
Sing Sing seems almost like a prison movie for people who hate prison movies. There are even some dryly comedic moments, like the men putting on a violent scene for stone-faced backers.
Bereft of the brutal clichés and tropes usually found in any story about incarcerated men (remember all the twisted shit that happened on Oz?), the film instead focuses on these convicts using theater to not only kill their time (pardon the expression) but also keep themselves sane. As indignities quietly go on around them all the time — from guards ransacking their cells to helplessly witnessing murders — putting on a show is the closest they get to freedom. As one character tearfully says, “We’re here to become human again.”
Sing Sing wears its authenticity with pride. Co-writer/director Greg Kwedar took damn near a decade assembling the story with actual ex-cons Maclin and John Whitfield — the latter is the real Divine G. (The program was actually founded in the mid-’90s by Katherine Vockins, but I guess Kwedar didn’t wanna make another “nice white lady” movie.) Shooting in several correctional facilities, including the titular one, Kwedar and cinematographer Pat Scola create a visual atmosphere that can be intimate and claustrophobic. But there are spacious, sunny moments when the characters go outside, literally touch grass and briefly get a taste of that sweet open air. Somehow the filmmakers make the outdoors look more appealing than the actual outdoors.
The cast is also populated with formerly incarcerated people who are RTA alumni, and Kwedar gives them the opportunity to show off their range during an amusing audition montage. Maclin does fascinating work transforming from cliché to creative, letting go of his inner badass and becoming himself when he becomes Hamlet. They all hold their own next to Domingo, who takes on his role as the movie’s beacon of hope with awe-inspiring tenderness. As his character works on both the play and his case for clemency, Domingo embodies quiet, defiant optimism, keeping his spirits up along with the spirits of his fellow jailbirds. You constantly want the homie to win, even though you know third-act hardships await.
Although Sing Sing is one of the more raw, moving, human stories you’ll see on the big screen this year, the movie also feels a little meta. It tells of a program that encourages prisoners to stop seeing themselves as caged animals, all while encouraging audiences to stop doing the same. Also, you should get some damn theater in your life.
