West of Memphis

Three chil­dren, sav­age­ly mur­dered; a reck­less police force; para­noid fears of dev­il wor­ship; three mis­un­der­stood teenagers; and a 20-year strug­gle for free­dom. These are just some of the ele­ments that make up Amy Berg’s West Of Mem­phis, the lat­est doc­u­men­tary to take on the sub­ject of the West Mem­phis Three.

Dis­tin­guished by its arrival in the wake of the Three’s recent release (as well as the pres­ence of long­time sup­port­er Peter Jack­son as pro­duc­er) those who thought Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt was a pow­er­ful tale of injus­tice are advised to brace themselves.

Char­ac­terised by dra­mat­ic twists and stranger-than-fic­tion plot points, the ordeal of Damien Echols, Jason Bald­win and Jessie Miskel­ley Jr could be the stuff of over­cooked pro­ce­dur­al dra­ma. Indeed Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot – star­ring Col­in Firth and Reese With­er­spoon – will give the sto­ry the Hol­ly­wood treat­ment in 2013, and the case has already pro­vid­ed the sub­ject for sev­er­al doc­u­men­taries, not least Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s game-chang­ing Par­adise Lost trilogy.

All of which might beg the ques­tion of where West of Mem­phis fits in, if it were not for the film’s sense of per­spec­tive. Where­as Par­adise Lost offered impas­sioned, present tense accounts that helped recruit the likes of John­ny Depp, Eddie Ved­der and Jack­son to the West Mem­phis Three cause, Berg’s film is a pacy, often reel­ing glance back­wards, both a call to arms and a rec­ol­lec­tion of a night­mare that is only just ending.

Con­dens­ing near­ly twen­ty years of inves­ti­ga­tions, appeals and rev­e­la­tions into a con­sis­tent­ly engross­ing 150 min­utes, this is a whis­tle-stop tour of the major facts: the three heavy met­al-lov­ing out­casts’ 1993 arrest; the lead­ing inter­ro­ga­tion of the bor­der­line-men­tal­ly dis­abled Miskel­ley; the expert tes­ti­monies since ripped apart by qual­i­fied experts; and the even­tu­al release of the men on a fudged plea bargain.

That West Of Mem­phis remains con­sis­tent­ly engag­ing even for those famil­iar with the case would be enough in itself, but this being a film made explic­it­ly by West Mem­phis Three sup­port­ers, it is also an account of the pow­er of cin­e­ma to affect change. Tak­ing its cue from Par­adise Lost, which helped cre­ate the enor­mous crowd-sourced cam­paign that even­tu­al­ly freed the three, West of Mem­phis stakes a bold claim for rel­e­vance by going all out in its final act assault on a new suspect.

Berg’s film proves best, though, when it momen­tar­i­ly gives up the cause. Jessie Miskel­ley Jr’s return to his trail­er park com­mu­ni­ty is full of eerie trep­i­da­tion, whilst Pam Hicks talks of grief for her mur­dered child and mar­riage to the now impli­cat­ed Ter­ry Hobbs, whose own daugh­ter appears to speak of the addic­tion and depres­sion caused by her father’s abuse. Pre­sum­ably includ­ed to fur­ther impli­cate its sus­pect, it instead pro­vides the film’s most mov­ing moment, a reminder of the wider effects of awful crimes.

Like any attempt to com­press tor­tured his­to­ry, West Of Mem­phis is by no means defin­i­tive. Miss­ing many of Par­adise Lost’s fas­ci­nat­ing nuances – at the very least Berg should have giv­en more screen time to the venge­ful community’s fire-and-brim­stone Greek cho­rus, Mark Byers – it is nev­er­the­less a com­pelling take on a stag­ger­ing sto­ry, intro­duc­ing new infor­ma­tion with a keen sense of drama.

Its taut nar­ra­tive con­trol can occa­sion­al­ly come off as glossy cam­paign­ing, but it lets in just enough heart­break to become a fit­ting tes­ta­ment to human tragedy.