Movie (plus T.V.) Reviews, page 3

note: all star ratings have to do with whether I think the story told is a realistic portrayal. In fact, all reviews are about covering issues related to abuse, scapegoating, toxic family portrayal, alcoholic family portrayal, substance abuse family portrayal, children from abusive families and their experiences, and how effective that portrayal is, not about how effective the movie-making is, or the set design, or production, directing and acting. I leave those concerns to other writers and reviewers. I don't even cover whether I would recommend the movie to others based on my likes and dislikes; I only recommend movies that I think will open people's eyes as to how survivors of abuse live in the world. 

This page contains reviews for:

The Book of Esther

The Book Of Esther
from the T.V. series, Law and Order, Special Victims Unit 

(written by Richard Sweren & Ryan Causey, directed by Jean de Segonzac)

According to Wikipedia, "The Book Of Esther" is about:

Rollins is called in to rescue a "teenage" girl named Esther (Rebekah Kennedy). When her father (Ray McKinnon) comes to pick her up from SVU, he appears to be a suspicious and strange man, and reveals that Esther is actually 27-years-old. The Special Victims Unit soon finds out that the father is a vicious child abuser, who is chaining his children in a basement and starving them. Rollins grows very close with the girl and promises her that she will get justice for her and keep her safe from her abusive father. Soon enough though, the case becomes extremely dangerous when the father orders Rollins out of his house at gunpoint. Finally, a stand-off ends in a tragic accident on Rollins' part and traumatizes her.

Episode inspired by the Turpin case.

REVIEW:

As Sam Roberts said in this Post Culture review:

This Wednesday the long-awaited Rollins-centric episode The Book of Esther finally aired. 

Considering that someone clearly used a cursed monkey’s paw to wish for more character-centered episodes this season, I was understandably apprehensive about it. But instead, The Book of Esther (written by SVU newcomer Ryan Causey) ended up being one of the strongest entries this season.

A lot of other reviewers of this episode thought so too.

I would not normally review a Law and Order SVU T.V. show, but the episode piqued my interest because there were some parallels to the Turpin case and the Turpins are also mentioned in the episode.

Law and Order SVU has many episodes inspired by real life events such as the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations, the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard, and many others, and I could be reviewing these shows one after the other because the shows are often the only kind of "moving pictures" that cover abuse, including child abuse. "Moving pictures" means T.V. shows, movies, videos, streaming, etc. In fact, SVU covers a lot of child abuse cases and are "ripped from the headlines" as the show likes to tout.

But the problem here is that the shows are too fast-paced to gain any real enlightenment about the victims, or the problem of abuse in our society, or why abuse cases are rising, or even why there are so many victim cases to cover for the show.

Perpetrators also almost always seem to be unhinged in these kinds of shows, with thinking that goes so far off into the deep end of irrationality or lacking in appeasement of present societal values, that they are not quite believable.

Real perpetrators are often such good actors and liars, better than the ones portraying them, and they overwhelmingly fit in with society so seamlessly that many people are in total disbelief when they are finally caught as perpetrators of abuse or crime ("What happened?!? He seemed like such a nice man! He did so much for us! Always so helpful! It is so shocking!"). So many perpetrators seem "so nice and helpful" to hide their real selves, especially when they are out in the community or with friends who are not around them enough to see anything else.

In my experience, and from hearing more stories than I can count, perpetrators espouse many practices to get the community, friends and some family to think of them counter to what they really are at home. For instance:

* Camp counselors and priests who sexually abuse children and who purport to care a great deal about children and child welfare has gotten a lot of publicity, and the most commonly known incidences of this phenomenon.

* A mother is a lecturer where she talks about bullying and child abuse to large audiences, but at home she is a nightmare child abuser and bullies her husband by giving him constant ultimatums that if he doesn't do what she wants at all times, she will take him to court and win custody of the children and be believed over him, because of her work as a champion for abused and bullied children.

* An ex-wife of a number of "former husbands" is a writer of articles to do with the family. She writes many articles about divorce, in fact. Several articles are about how former inlaws should still be part of "an over-all family", that the inlaw relationships should continue despite the divorce. She does this because she still wants to insert herself into her own former inlaws lives, to gain favor with them against her exes, to isolate their exes from their own families, and not because she wants to share her own family with her former husbands. In fact, she paints all of her former husbands as "monsters" to her family and threatens to never talk to any of them if they so much as try to contact any of her exes. 

These are all real stories, and there are so many just like them, but you get my drift. Perpetrators generally show a great deal of hypocrisy, and social charm, something that is hard not to notice when you hear as many abuse cases as I have heard and read about. Also, when perpetrators are caught, they are heavily, heavily invested in proclaiming that they are the real victims, and that the victims are the perpetrators. And guess what? Often they are believed, and even law enforcement can have a hard time unraveling it all. Granted law enforcement officials are the least likely to believe in words and explanations, and it is their job to get to the bottom of what's really going on. But many perpetrators are at least believed by people in their social circles, and even defended, even if the perpetrators are not necessarily believed by detectives, social workers and psychologists. 

Part of why I gave this show only two stars is because, as I have said in the beginning of the post, my reviews are based on how realistic the portrayals are. 

In this show, the portrayals are realistic only in the context of drama-related sound-bites, such as local news crews and their editors do when they interview people involved in an event for a news story (where a lot of the words of the interviewee are timed to be so short and clipped that they are taken out of context, and where the interviewees can be portrayed in a "disadvantaged light" by the news station, and where most of what is said for public viewing has the most dramatic, emotionally shocking edge to it).

The "disadvantaged light" is in full force in this portrayal, whereas in a real situation, there are many more nuances, and times of normality, or at least the illusions of normality to create some cognitive dissonance in the victims and in the people around the abuser.

This means that the viewing audience of this SVU portrayal is too likely to see the father, who is the patriarchal abuser, as all crazy and all bad, something that would not necessarily happen in a real life situation (it is easy to be confused by most real perpetrators, who constantly use hypocrisies to avoid detection). 

If a real father was the kind of sociopath who was ingratiating enough to pull his daughter back into the vortex of such a highly abusive family, and brainwash so effectively, he would at least have to have some kind of Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde personality, where he would appear to switch between being very sweet to being very cruel, at the very least, to pull off the persuasion to the daughter. In other words, he would have to portray some normality like so many hypocritical abusers do as in the style of three I have presented above, even to his victim. 

An all bad, all crazy abuser would mean the 27 year old victim would be latching tightly on to Rollins, and not be willing to leave with the father under any circumstances. Also the other eight children would be desperately brainstorming together to run away too.

In the real Turpin case, none of the children wanted to go back to their parents once the parents were in custody (and that was with guns out of the picture), or to have their parents released from culpability or detainment while awaiting trial. What child who is chained, lying in excrement, constantly filthy, starving, erroneously punished over running water, toyed with emotionally, always imprisoned in the family home under the guise of "home schooling" would NOT want to go with Rollins? The real situation of the Turpins was so cruel to the children that it was beyond any effective brainwashing of the children. Which is to say that there is a reason why the true story of the Turpin children not wanting to go back to their parents rings truer than SVU's fictional one.

In other words, in order for the kind of cognitive dissonance to appear in the SVU victim enough to be drawn back into a life with her abuser, the father would have to be ingratiating and nice enough to her at least half of the time or more. He would also have to promise that she would not have to endure the starvation and the extent of the abuse she had endured before. But the audience never sees him in this light. He resembles the kind of sociopath who is a twisted loner rather than the half ingratiating, half cruel brainwasher.

The other thing about this episode is that there is way more time spent on the SVU team than on the story of the abusive family. In so much of this episode, there is a lot more time spent on Rollins, and in on how she handles the case (not very well), the strategy of "saving the children" (also not handled well), and the fall-out and grief Rollins endures afterward. 

My feeling is that SVU episodes are written for fans who watch the show weekly, who are interested in the character developments in the SVU unit, and in how cases are solved by the unit. The victims are the backdrop. The show probably would appeal to people in law enforcement, in other words. Law enforcement officials do comment on reviewer sites of SVU in terms of keeping the show accurate from their perspective (and, from what I have seen, almost no therapists or psychologists do, those who would know how victims really behave in these situations). 

If you want to search for a narrative that makes sense, the real story of the Turpins is a lot more compelling, and goes much deeper into why and how it happened, than this brief SVU Law and Order. The Turpin mother, for instance, was only 16 when she married Mr. Turpin, grew up being sexually abused, and was diagnosed with Histrionic Personality Disorder. Even those facts explain quite a bit, and she is just the matriarch. Then there are the children, 13 of them, all of whom have stories too. Then there is the extended family ...

The other problem I have always found with Law and Order, in general, is that the dialogue is much too fast-paced, sometimes to the point of being incomprehensible, especially if you have to decipher words through various accents and mumblings. It is at least to the point where you cannot ruminate on anything they say. And some of the dialogue is worth hearing. One gets the feeling that the writers and producers want to pack as much dialogue into the story as possible, and time it in such a way to make room for commercials, so the actors' lines often sound rushed and stagy instead of believable and thoughtful. SVU has to rely on the emotional output of the actors to draw people into the story.

The "shoot-em up" at the end seemed much too "Hollywood" and to be about setting up a plot involving the SVU team, rather than adding anything to the issue of egregious child abuse, and how our society goes wrong in protecting children.

The reason I gave it two stars instead of one is that the story pulled me in emotionally, even if it did not pull me in intellectually or give me any satisfaction in terms of enlightenment. It will not be "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and change attitudes and laws, that is for sure. All of the maternal energy put into saving children is something that a lot of us can relate to however, and that's the reason for the second star. If only the nation "felt" maternal enough to prevent a situation similar to what the Turpins lived through, child abuse might be a rarity.

I have written some stories I have heard from real child abuse survivors about what they endured, and any one of them might make a much better story than this one, and actually get people thinking ... here is one link to such stories (scroll to the pet killing mother) - more to come.

Further reading:

Law & Order SVU “The Book Of Esther” Recap & Review - by Chris Zimmer from the All Things Law and Order website

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 19) - from Wikipedia

The Book of Esther (forum) - from Primetimer website

The Turpins - from Wikipedia

The Turpins are sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after their children testify about years of torture - by Dakin Andone for CNN

Where Are The 13 Abused Turpin Children Now? Here Are The Most Recent Developments In The Ongoing House Of Horrors Case - by Chip Chick