![]() ![]() Photo: Christopher Saunders/Showtimeīut the social justice cluelessness and whitewashing is really what’s been stuck in my craw since the opening episode. Ben Stiller behind the scenes on ‘Escape at Dannemora’ (Episode 4). While the cinematography added a great deal to the location of Clinton Correctional and its environs as a character in the story, long camera shots showing how remote and cold the prison is, it wasn’t enough to make up for the unevenness of the rest of the production. And there were a tiresome number of examples of a tone deafness that comes with Stiller’s level of white privilege. I half expected Sweat to fling his pickaxe over his shoulder and give us a Blue Steel strut. These are two murderers, in jail for murder. I was shocked that Stiller would play an upbeat heist song like Elton John’s “Take Me To The River” as Inmate Sweat digs tunnels and carves into pipes below the prison for his and Matt’s escape. It alternates between all three to the detriment of the story as a whole. This production couldn’t decide if it was a threesome sex show, a buddy escape comedy, or a true crime drama. His direction in Dannemora was uneven at best. While I appreciate him wanting to branch out, Ben Stiller needs to go back to his comedy lane. If anyone deserves an award in Escape At Dannemora it is Dano, and Dano alone. But I can’t deny the power of Dano’s openness and pain as he embodies this role. The one shining star in this seven-part series is Paul Dano’s raw and vulnerable performance as Inmate Sweat. Because what is worse than an older woman in sexual situations, than a pretty woman who makes herself unattractive in the public eye? It’s another emotionally manipulative move from Dannemora ’s creators, and I don’t fall for this one anymore. Boorish, physically intimidating, and a quiet kind of monstrousness that would be exciting if I hadn’t seen him do this same thing over and over again these past many years.Īs Tilly Mitchell, Patricia Arquette has put her name on the list of actresses who gain weight and present as ugly for the benefit of an award-sweeping role. Lip service to diversity instead of examining the actual social and cultural conditions of a prison like Clinton Correctional.ĭel Toro’s performance is his usual schtick of late. Casting Benicio del Toro to add color to the main cast was a manipulative move on Stiller’s part. In real life, Ricky Matt was White - at least, I found no mention of race in dozens of articles I read about him which we know indicates whiteness. As again with tales of white devilry, Black faces and Black pain are used as wallpaper to the White experience. While prisons in America are majority Black and Hispanic populations, the main cast of Escape At Dannemora is predominantly white. Benicio Del Toro as Richard Matt and Patricia Arquette as Tilly. Director Ben Stiller, however, certainly does his utmost to paint them that way. There is nothing heroic about either of these men, in real life or in Escape At Dannemora. Ricky Matt was a serial killer who liked chopping people up after he killed them - not like Dexter, Matt was in it for his victims’ money. Inmate Sweat was in Clinton Correctional for the gruesome murder of a cop. ![]() This might sound a little like The Shawshank Redemption, Papillon, Escape from Alcatraz, or The Count of Monte Cristo, all stories about innocent men who escape from prison because they don’t belong there. They were helped in their escape by Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell, the woman who ran the sewing workshop at the prison - and who also allegedly was having sex with both prisoners. In June 2015, inmates David Sweat (Paul Dano) and Richard “Ricky” Matt (aka “Hacksaw” played by Benicio del Toro) escaped from the facility known as Little Siberia and evaded capture for three weeks. Some of these dynamics are present in Ben Stiller’s limited Showtime series Escape At Dannemora, the true story of a recent prison break at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The University of Virginia’s racial dot map of the U.S. America’s prison system has been called a modern form of slavery, since prison labor is often mandatory and pays pennies an hour. Worse, Blacks are incarcerated fives times more frequently than whites for comparable offenses, in particular marijuana possession. According to the American Bureau of Justice statistics, America makes up 4.4% of the global population, but 22% of the global prison population. ![]() One example of America’s terrible exceptionalism is its prison system.
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