Product Description
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From Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg (2006,
Best Documentary Feature, Deliver Us From Evil) in collaboration
with the multiple Academy Award®-winning team of Peter Jackson
and Fran Walsh (2003, Best Picture & Best Adapted Screenplay, The
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), WEST OF MEMPHIS tells
the untold story behind an extraordinary and desperate fight to
stop the State of Arkansas from killing an innocent man. Told and
produced by those who lived it, Damien Echols and Lorri Davis,
the film uncovers new evidence surrounding the 1993 murders of
three eight-year-old boys in the small town of West Memphis,
Arkansas, and exposes the wrongful conviction of three teenagers
who lost 18 years of their lives imprisoned for crimes they did
not commit.
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You'd think that after the exhaustive Paradise Lost
trilogy of documentaries by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (in
1996, 2000, and 2011) about the so-called West Memphis Three
child murders that the subject would be pretty well accounted
for. That is certainly true, but West of Memphis is in no way
superfluous or redundant in its passionate examination of what is
nearly impossible not to call a grave miriage of justice. For
anyone who has seen the Paradise Lost films, the details of the
case against Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley
are well known. Ever since their trial, conviction, and life
sentences (with a death sentence for Echols) as teenagers for
allegedly murdering three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas,
in 1993, the men have been regarded as scapegoats by thousands of
people around the world as well as those ly involved in
the case. Though the state of Arkansas never budged on its
obstinate stance, the three were released in a plea deal after 17
years when pushes for a possible new trial pointed to further
rancor and the probability of new evidence that would expose a
massive web of injustice. Director Amy Berg interviews many of
the same characters that Sinofsky and Berlinger did, but her
perspective is focused on efforts to free the men with a plethora
of allegations infinitely more believable than that which the
state used to ramrod them into guilt. Her star witness in this
film is Lorri Davis, the woman Echols befriended by mail, then
married in prison in 1999. Her efforts on the outside led to the
ongoing campaign to free the West Memphis Three as well as to new
investigations into who actually committed the crime. (Berg and
Echols are coproducers, along with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
of Lord of the Rings fame, who were massive financial and moral
supporters of the cause since its beginning.) There is, of
course, some duplication of material and it feels a little long,
but West of Memphis is scrupulously crafted in both its visual
style as well as its attention to the minutiae of facts--forensic
and otherwise--that overwhelmingly point the finger of guilt at
the stepher of one of the victims. Digging deep, adding moral
and emotional weight, and doling out information gradually to
truly damning effect, West of Memphis is completely absorbing and
extraordinarily moving. It also seems to be not nearly the end of
the story in asking so many questions about whether genuine
justice will ever be served. --Ted Fry