Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Steve James
Directed By:
Steve James
Sometimes, you can crap out a good story by accident. STEVIE turned out to be a mesmerizing movie, but for all the wrong reasons. I'm sure that director Steve James (who's behind the touching but never-ending HOOP DREAMS) wanted to make a movie about his relationship to Stephen Fielding when he got the idea of shooting STEVIE. In a way, he achieved just that. He also achieved to shoot a movie about how big of an asshole he is. You can't watch this film and expect to be genuinely touched. It's one of the most awkward, twisted pieces of entertainment you can only appreciate the way one watches a train wreck. A documentary often implies an objective camera and a neutral stance on the subject, but it's not the case here. Steve James is a character of his own story and he does for a convincing bad guy.
From the start, the idea behind STEVIE reeked of opportunism. Fresh out of the HOOP DREAMS success, Steve James is scrambling for new ideas and comes across this old memory of Stephen Fielding and him. Ten years before, James enlisted in the big brother advocates program and was assigned young Stevie as a first assignment. He admits that he expected having a young, healthy kid who loved to play sport and who "he could identify with" and though Stevie was too tough and too damaged, that he was "difficult". So he moved to another city and left him behind. So ten years later, he knocks on the Fielding family's porch, looking for a documentary subject and he's surprised to find out that Stevie became pretty much human garbage. He's still living with his grandmother and he is damage way beyond repair. So Steve James runs away again, for two years this time. Then he calls the Fielding house back to learn that Stevie is in jail for molesting his eight years old cousin. Smelling a fat steak, James comes back into Stevie's life and we had this really odd documentary as a result.
Not every story needs to be told. I believe that a human being, drowning in his own misery should be helped or left alone. Not filmed for entertainment. Every shameful detail of Stephen Fielding's life is unfolded in this rather badly edited (it's almost two hours and a half) documentary. Steve James interviews his estrange mother, the mother of the victim (his aunt), he tells Stephen' old foster parents (whom Stephen really cared about) that he molested a little girl, he displays Stephens blatant sexism, he focused really too much on his handicapped girlfriend. It's a how-low-can-you-go type of movies. Two scenes baffled me particularly. First, a scene a bit before Stephen's sentencing where he goes to a club with his girlfriend and one of her heavily handicapped friends. James kept juxtaposing images of them dancing with other, more..let's say aerobically-capable people and he pictures Stephen getting drunker and drunker. In another scene, Stephen is discussing with acquaintances a possible entry in the Aryan Brotherhood, so he can keep safe in jail.
What was the point, Mr. James? Show Steven as he truly was? Yeah, the man turned into a sordid individual. No shit. When everybody abandons you in your life, you're going to do dumb shit eventually. Stephen seems to still be twelve years old in his mind. He sure talks like one. STEVIE is a movie about the symptoms of a disease it never tries to understand. Monstrous people and monstrous for a reason and that's what I was interested in. Understand how Stephen came from being a vulnerable, abused kid to being a fucked up individual. Instead, I had a Stevespoitation movie. The real subject of STEVIE is the director's despair for a successful film and his iron-willed voyeurism. It's pretty effective at that, I have to admit. Worst part about that is that STEVIE won many awards and a web site even called it "the best documentary of the decade", which is stretching it about a mile too far.
For those who are interested, Stevie's still in prison. He went through his complete sentence for acting retarded in prison and right when he came out, he got busted for not complying with his sex offender regulations. I don't know what Steve James wanted STEVIE to be about. Did he want to share Stephen Fielding's personal drama with an audience? It's kind of sickening how he's washing himself clean from any responsibilities by the end of the movie, being all "I made peace with my demons by bringing him books in prison" . STEVIE is voyeuristic, infuriating, unfair and often sickening, but it's a blunt example of American entertainment at its most evil (I can't find a better word than that). The desperate search for entertaining images. STEVIE is a badly edited, way too long descent into a man's personal hell without trying to understand him, yet I couldn't stop watching it. Mr. James, that movie said a lot more about you than it said about your subject.
SCORE: 68%
Recommendation: For whenever you're in the mood for some twisted shit that wasn't meant to be twisted. That's the most fucked up it can get.