Filmmaker Amy Berg (Oscar nominated Deliver Us From Evil) has once again struck documentary gold with her hard-hitting journalistic feature, West of Memphis.
The film documents the infamous 1993-94 murder trial of the teenaged “West Memphis Three”—Jason Baldwin, Damien Wayne Echols and Jessie Misskelley—who were accused and sentenced with the brutal killings of three children. It takes its audience through a rollercoaster of emotions—from outrage, grief and incredulity, to the opposite spectrum of empathy, disturbance and indignation.
Berg documents her subjects with a lot of sincere introspection yet presents an unbiased view of the circumstances and characters involved whenever possible. With an extensive archive of mind-blowing news footage and interviews, Berg builds up the history of the case and then, once the viewer is hooked, she lets it all unravel.
West of Memphis starts to build its own case at this point, referring to Mara Leveritt‘s book, Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, one of the first documented investigations into the validity of the case. It opens up the Pandora’s Box of questions surrounding the trial and conviction of the teens and second-guesses the judge, jury and community in their unwavering belief in appearances over truth. It is highly controversial, as one might imagine, because the case is so emotionally charged. The film is particularly well balanced in this respect, however, and gives the viewer all the gory details that elicit human feeling while still unashamedly showing the justice system’s blatant disregard of documented alibis in favor of wild and unfounded stories about the West Memphis Three.
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