Time - 2020
This review may contain spoilers.
I will confess, though it's probably an unpopular view, that I struggled with the first thirty minutes or so of Time. I knew immediately that I was supposed to be rooting for this family. That I was to perceive the injustice done to them and the very real evils of a criminal system bent unfavorably away from people of color and react with feeling and affront. I am no unfeeling dolt. The story of Fox and Rob Rich is laced with pathos. It is expertly told, exquisitely edited, rendered in magnificent black and white and littered with grand "performances."
So, rooting I did. But I still felt as if I was feeling around in the dark for context. "Wait," I wanted to implore. "So you're saying that there was a real robbery in which people were held at gunpoint, and you were the getaway driver?” Twenty years sounds like a very LONG time (through the legal proceedings this grew to a whopping sixty), but what should it have been? What would a white person have gotten in the place of this family? I'm aware of the larger trends of negligence for POC at the very least and outright, wanton prejudice in many cases. Still, I searched for the boundaries and edges with regards to this particular family.
But, as it turns out, that is not the point at all. Time is telling an altogether different story than that of The 13th or other works examining the breadth of the US criminal justice system. No, this was instead a story about perseverance and faith, hope in the face of the abyss. It's a tale about one woman who won't stop fighting for her man, against all odds, whatever the costs. A documentary in style, it is no less cinematic than any fictionalized feature length film. This is an epic in the grand redemption tale tradition. It's also a story about life in the cracks and margins, on living in the "in-between" land where promise has not yet become fulfillment, where bondage has not given way to freedom. While Fox Rich called minor courts and attorneys regularly, she also had to be about the business of everyday life. She had six sons to raise. She had a business to get off the ground herself, and a book that needed to be written. She had a husband that needed to be seen in prison when visitations allowed it.
What is so remarkable about all of this is that she kept the camera rolling. Her love for her husband compelled her to capture the footage he was missing with his own two eyes. Shots of little boys becoming young men and a pregnant gal transforming into a confident, sweet, composed, and passionate communicator to others in her plight. She wrote down her story and traveled for speaking engagements, where she delivered pointed messages about injustice yes, but more importantly on not giving up and continuing the fight.
It is in the editing and commingling of this archival footage with the present lives of this family that this work of art begins to feel transcendent. The use of black and white is an aesthetic decision which adds magnitude and weight to the whole affair. We see one Rich twin becoming a debate member in college, another suavely reciting French flashcards with his mother, and the youngest shyly eavesdropping on his mother's phone call with Rich in prison. There are family gatherings and Sunday services, and a few magnificent remarks from the world-wise mother of the bride who holds nothing back.
These comments from the matriarch lead me to the two most powerful aspects of Time. The first is that it never excuses poor decisions. One of the first quotes out of the mouth of Fox's mother is: “I’ve always been a firm believer: Right don’t come to you doing wrong." The rest of the film bears this out. A particular affecting scene is archival footage of Fox standing next to her pastor repenting of the poor choice she made and how it hurt herself, her children, her pastor and church family, and even her mother.
Yet Time burrows even deeper. Other critics have said it better, but I remain fascinated by the performative aspects of documentary. The base assumption is that this is all just real people living normal lives and nothing more, but Time puts the lie to such thinking. When the cameras go on, all of us adopt affectations and personas. Even in the absence of an overt audience, we all play roles daily. Fox's final phone call to a justice clerk is not only the best example I can muster with regards to this but also a top 5 scene of the entire year. In it, she offers total quoteboard material for any sports locker room, personal diary, or office wall - "Success is the best revenge."
Fox had called clerks multiple times and had the proverbial door slammed in her face repeatedly. No, we haven't decided this or that yet, they all seem to say. Wait longer. And she maintains her sweet, Christian persona through it all. Until she doesn't. That is, until she hangs up and at last the levees break. The veneer of southern hospitality and charm is stripped away and naked, unabashed anger and pain stands in its place. She curses and slams the table, calling out the unseen workers of injustice. We'll get them, she seems to say. They'll see.
We realize then most vividly all the layers and depth of this woman's character. The anger is there. But it’s largely buried, and she’s mostly chosen to overwhelm it with love and dignity. This is when I felt that this was not only a documentary but a film as well. So, this sequence sets us up for a jaw-dropping finale of reunion. Hope realized. And for someone like me, who truly did not read ahead to find out the end from the beginning, the cathartic payoff was mind-blowing. The tears fell freely as Fox Rich wore a headdress and posed triumphantly, hair blowing in the wind. When she caressed her husband in the back of a limo. When their son, at a reunion dinner, choked back tears after spending an entire day with his father, having to pinch himself to be certain it was all real.
By the end, I realized the errors in my earlier thinking. The point was never that the Rich's were prosecuted unjustly. It was not that they hadn't done anything wrong. Oh they owned their mistakes and attempted to make right in light of them. It wasn't entirely about how white sentencing would compare either. The truth is that 60 years without chance of parole is a whale of a long time to be incarcerated, especially when Rob Rich got the book thrown at him for refusing to take a plea deal for 12 years. Bad legal advice and unmitigated punishment because of the color of one's skin? THAT should be an affront to anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen. I may have spent the first hour less than enthralled with the proceedings. But the third act is TRANSCENDENT. This is a story about love fighting against all odds and winning. And on those terms, it just doesn't get much better than this.
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