New­town

There is cur­rent­ly no polit­i­cal issue in Amer­i­ca more insen­si­bly and detri­men­tal­ly grid­locked than gun con­trol. And, as expect­ed, many film­mak­ers have rushed to reflect the polar­is­ing cli­mate with­in a spate of recent and upcom­ing releas­es. Spike Lee’s funky-fero­cious Lysis­tra­ta update, Chi-Raq, is a rat­tling kick in the pants and the director’s most refresh­ing work in years, denounc­ing gun vio­lence with both rev­el­ry and despair. Else­where, Jes­si­ca Chas­tain plays a tena­cious lob­by­ist who takes on pro-gun politi­cians in John Madden’s Miss Sloane, due lat­er this year. And this past June, direc­tor Stephanie Soechtig and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Katie Couric found them­selves at the cen­tre of a right-wing firestorm over a sin­gle edit­ing deci­sion in their doc­u­men­tary Under the Gun.

That last film zeroes in on the intran­si­gence that fol­lowed the Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School shoot­ing, that ter­ri­ble turn­ing point in America’s rela­tion­ship with guns which is also the focus of anoth­er new doc­u­men­tary. Kim A Snyder’s New­town takes its title from the Con­necti­cut town where six staffers and 20 stu­dents, no old­er than six or sev­en, were shot to death by a lone gun­man in Decem­ber 2012. New­town, like Columbine before it and Orlan­do after it, is a name that will for­ev­er ring with dis­qui­et­ing rec­ol­lec­tions. It’s a word that comes to mean many things over the course of the film: a place and a tragedy, yes, but also an impas­sioned plea, a ral­ly­ing cry, and a shift­ing way of life.

Most films – espe­cial­ly doc­u­men­taries – that grap­ple with gun vio­lence are craft­ed around ratio­nal and explic­it polit­i­cal beliefs that not only dri­ve these projects but give them a rea­son to exist. Some­times, though, these films strug­gle to make their cas­es in as imme­di­ate and indeli­ble a way as Bowl­ing for Columbine, Michael Moore’s deep-root­ed 2002 explo­ration of gun cul­ture, a film unde­ni­ably shaped by its director’s beliefs (and show­man­ship) but also clev­er­ly and renew­ably cin­e­mat­ic in declar­ing them. As with Moore, the hearts of these film­mak­ers are unques­tion­ably in the right place, but by con­trast to an incen­di­ary work like Bowl­ing, too many are guilty of sim­ply preach­ing to the choir.

New­town is an unusu­al but nec­es­sary excep­tion. It is, first and fore­most, a por­trait of a small town in recov­ery that takes as its cen­tral sub­jects Mark Bar­den, Nicole Hock­ley, and David Wheel­er, three par­ents whose chil­dren were killed dur­ing the attack and who strug­gle with each pass­ing day to under­stand and accept their respec­tive loss­es. The film is large­ly com­prised of talk­ing heads tes­ti­monies from the par­ents, as well as mem­bers of the wider New­town com­mu­ni­ty. Many were direct­ly involved in the chaos of the day, like Sarah Cox, the school nurse who hid in her office as the shoot­er passed her door, or Lau­rie Veil­lette, a vol­un­teer EMT work­er who drove Wheeler’s son, Ben, to the local hos­pi­tal. Ear­ly on, first-respon­der Sergeant William Cario firm­ly refus­es to talk about the events in graph­ic detail, the blanched look on his face impart­ing every­thing we need to know.

Some were phys­i­cal­ly dis­tanced from the hor­rors of the attack but con­tin­ue to wres­tle with the trau­ma that fol­lowed. Every first-hand state­ment is inevitably heart-wrench­ing; few make it through their accounts with­out chok­ing up. But they’re also smart­ly framed: each sub­ject sits cen­tred in front of the same mut­ed black back­drop, mod­est­ly lit and filmed above the shoul­der. It’s a spare set-up that is eas­i­ly over­looked, but such self-effac­ing sim­plic­i­ty allows each inter­vie­wee to sit on the same lev­el, grace­ful­ly evok­ing the con­nect­ed com­mu­ni­ty that will become these res­i­dents’ sav­ing grace.

Sny­der also takes us inside the homes of the fam­i­lies, acquaint­ing us with the remain­ing mem­bers, open­ing up their pho­to albums, and even bring­ing us into the bed­rooms that are either emp­tied out entire­ly or, as in Hockley’s case, used as a stor­age space for piles of let­ters, por­traits, blan­kets and stuffed toys from ran­dom well-wish­ers. Home movies play on repeat, leav­ing an emo­tion­al imprint on both the film and the view­er. Through­out all this, Sny­der remains close but respect­ful to the fam­i­lies, ulti­mate­ly allow­ing her to get clos­er to her sub­jects. ​“I have this need to know what he expe­ri­enced,” con­fess­es Bar­den, who lost his son, Daniel, and talks about ​“alter­nat­ing melt­downs” with his wife in the years since. At anoth­er point Wheel­er admits, ​“We’re all ter­ri­fied of for­get­ting what [Ben] looked like,” empha­sis­ing the emo­tion­al res­o­nance of the fam­i­ly pho­tos and videos we see, but also giv­ing them an urgency, as though will­ing them not to fade away.

By and large the film remains unpoliti­cised, which might seem like a mis­take to those seek­ing a more declar­a­tive screed against the dan­gers of gun vio­lence. Sny­der nev­er digress­es too far from the top­ic, even though her end­ing should per­haps be hit hard­er than it does. New­town isn’t quite the polit­i­cal­ly-mobil­is­ing doc­u­ment it could have been, but that’s only because it attempts some­thing tougher. Sny­der knows that, after a cer­tain point, all the speechi­fy­ing in the world can­not deliv­er the same heart­break­ing blow as a scene between two par­ents — one the apolo­getic father of a sur­vivor, the oth­er a moth­er of the deceased — who engage in a strained but sym­pa­thet­ic catch-up, each unsure what should be said or how much emo­tion should be shown and yet still lis­ten­ing to the oth­er with an open ear and heart.