OJ: Made in Amer­i­ca is one of the most vital films of our time

It’s hard to recall a more fatigu­ing and frus­trat­ing film than OJ: Made in Amer­i­ca, the ESPN com­mis­sioned doc­u­men­tary-event direct­ed by Ezra Edel­man. Not sim­ply because it shows how two inno­cent peo­ple lost their lives, or how the prime sus­pect was let off only to flaunt his free­dom for the best part of 15 years. The real­i­ty of the OJ Simp­son tri­al, we learn, is that a dis­en­fran­chised com­mu­ni­ty, starv­ing for a voice amid a cli­mate of fear and oppres­sion, made a mar­tyr out of a murderer.

In the end, the film is as con­flict­ed about that as you will be. Its incred­i­ble length –sev­en hours and 30 min­utes – makes for a sprawl­ing can­vas onto which the film­mak­ers illus­trate their case detail in gru­elling detail, with a com­mit­ment to the facts so absolute as to make David Fincher’s Zodi­ac seem like scrib­bled high school cliff notes. The par­al­lels don’t stop there: just as Zodi­ac isn’t real­ly about the Zodi­ac Killer, nor is OJ: Made in Amer­i­ca real­ly about the man nick­named ​“The Juice”. In a sense he is a For­rest Gump-like fig­ure, guid­ing us through decades of racial ten­sion and police bru­tal­i­ty via the tri­al of the cen­tu­ry, dur­ing which these issues came crash­ing down on a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem guilty of treat­ing them with shame­ful indifference.

The first three hours are all OJ and the media fren­zy that sur­round­ed him: his game win­ning 64-yard TD; his 2000-yard sea­son play­ing for the Buf­fa­lo Bills; his rise to house­hold name star­dom; and final­ly how that celebri­ty image became a slap in the face to the ail­ing black com­mu­ni­ty that nur­tured him. It’s a com­pre­hen­sive, vital por­trait. Here was a man seem­ing­ly so aware of his pub­lic per­cep­tion that to his friends and fam­i­ly, he appeared to be active­ly snuff­ing out every trace of his iden­ti­ty, leav­ing a poi­so­nous and explo­sive ego in its place.

At first, it was mere­ly an attempt to remove him­self from a volatile con­ver­sa­tion. He saw black icons like Muham­mad Ali voic­ing their anger on nation­al tele­vi­sion and want­ed noth­ing to do with it. If he was to be judged, it would be by his tal­ents, not by the colour of his skin or his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the hot but­ton issues of the day. But to some this aver­sion to hav­ing a pure­ly black image began to look more and more like an era­sure of his African-Amer­i­can heritage.

In a telling moment, the film picks apart the process of shoot­ing a com­mer­cial about OJ in which he sprints through an air­port with passers­by shout­ing ​“Go, OJ, go!” To make the idea of a TV spot cen­tred around a promi­nent black man more palat­able, the crew sur­round­ed him with all-white actors so as to immerse him in a world tar­get audi­ences mem­bers would recog­nise as their own. Nobody bat­ted an eye­lash – espe­cial­ly not OJ.

It’s at this point OJ’s apa­thy towards social jus­tice takes on shades of out­right dis­taste, not only towards black peo­ple but towards the gay com­mu­ni­ty as well. When his father came out, he prac­ti­cal­ly became a non-enti­ty to OJ. The film tells a sto­ry about a rage fit he threw after see­ing a gay man, a friend of his wife Nicole’s, kiss one of his chil­dren on the head. It was as if any­thing that forced him to face the unwant­ed details of his life was seen as a direct attack on the per­sona he’d metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed. And the fur­ther he drift­ed from him­self, the more unsta­ble he became behind closed doors. He devel­oped adul­ter­ous habits, cheat­ing on his first wife and even­tu­al­ly leav­ing her for Nicole, only to alien­ate her and even­tu­al­ly sub­ject her to phys­i­cal abuse.

After a 15-minute inter­mis­sion, we open on a date: 13 June, 1994. The day Nicole Brown Simp­son and Ron Gold­man were found dead at her home in Brent­wood, Los Ange­les. Almost imme­di­ate­ly we’re hit with a burst of lurid images from the mur­der scene, includ­ing the two limp bod­ies and the now infa­mous blood-spat­tered glove. When the tri­al final­ly comes around, the deck is stacked heav­i­ly against OJ. But the more we watch, the more appar­ent it becomes that his guilt is almost beside the point. In the grander scheme of things, it wasn’t just OJ Simp­son who was on tri­al, but the Amer­i­can jus­tice sys­tem itself.

By the time the film arrives at the ver­dict and we watch OJ walk free, we’re left feel­ing angry but unsure where to direct our ire. After 450 min­utes, too many ques­tions have been answered for us to be left ful­ly out­raged – if any­thing, the over­whelm­ing feel­ing is one of sur­ren­der. As OJ arrives home, an asso­ciate of Simpson’s brings the entire doc­u­ment and tes­ti­mo­ny into dev­as­tat­ing focus: ​“This wasn’t a vic­to­ry for the black com­mu­ni­ty. It was a vic­to­ry for some rich guy named OJ Simp­son, and that trou­bles me.”