We open onstage, blue light and garlands.
We are in the presence of Divine G (Colman Domingo), wreathed and quietly commanding. One line he utters, essaying the role of Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, could serve as a statement on the whole film that is to follow: “And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’”
In Greg Kewdar’s Sing Sing, named for the infamous “correctional facility” where the film is set, the inmates control their lives in very few ways. The prison staff, that we see, are not cruel, merely indifferent or annoyed. Most of them are in it for the long haul; often life. The only place they do have power is on the Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme, of which Divine G is a beloved founding member.
Domingo and Paul Raci (Oscar nominated for Sound of Metal) as theatre director Brent, are the only two professional actors in Sing Sing. The cast is otherwise populated by former inmates who benefitted from the programme, usually playing corollaries of themselves. The genuine chemistry and sense of camaraderie within the group, celebrating recent triumphs, plotting, and rehearsing their next production, helps us understand how important this outlet is to them.
As such, the entry of Clarence “Divine Eye” Macklin, (playing himself, and who, along with the real Divine G, receives a story credit) upset the dynamic; albeit mildly. He’s guarded, taciturn, and resistant to the hint of silliness. The film is not just about Divine G’s attempts to draw him Eye out of himself, or about the play’s development, but charts different strains of passion and regret with the pair as its primary focus.
Bryce Dessner’s meditative orchestral score melds perfectly with Pat Scola’s cinematography, both airy and subtly oppressive. Brent’s repeated mantra is to “Trust in the process”, but how do you do that when you’re within a wider system that doesn’t allow for your humanity? And that’s, ultimately, what Sing Sing is about: the humanity that comes when people are enabled to be vulnerable.
Humanity in comedy – the play-within-a-play Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code is an actual fully-developed work, a loose Excellent Adventure-style time-travel comedy that the real-life members of RTF staged, as shown in a home-video-style credit sequence. Humanity in tragedy – a common theme as the inmates relate their own experiences; deeply intimate, confessional but never stagey for it.
Domingo never grandstands, but, like the film itself, provides a tour de force in essentiality: you don’t need to yell when you’re saying something true. He is utterly present and authentic in every moment and matched beat for beat by the rest of the cast, so that, even for those scenes where Divine G is not present, the film, like RTF, can function without him; though his absence is felt.
Acting does not resolve all their issues – Sing Sing is uplifting but not avoidant in that regard. You understand the characters’ pain and their joy, their hopes and fears. Roger Ebert said that “The movies are like a machine that generates empathy”. If that’s true, Sing Sing has it down to a fine art.