As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free ...

I watched this little documentary / film about staging a play yesterday called Shakespeare Behind Bars. It chronicles an actual prison program in Kentucky that has inmates put on a Shakespeare production every year after about 36 weeks of preparation. The film is very very tenderly put together, with obvious biases against the prison system. We comes close up to the inmates (many of them killers ... of wives and lovers) as they reveal themselves and their pasts even as they are interrogated by the roles that they play.

The play, one of my faves, is The Tempest, and it was nice to see a documentary (and production) that did not focus on the "play within a play" motif that dominates most interpretations. Instead, the forgiveness theme of the play was what the the inmates connected with, and this showed as they dealt with their character and personal struggles.

It wasn't all triumphal. One of the players, a great interpreter of that sly intellectual Antonio (and in prison for sexually abusing 7 girls ... I'm sure he was a lit teacher ...) is placed in solitary confinement and later transferred to a maximum security prison. Interestingly, the film doesn't try to explain what he did wrong but captures the sense of unease and uncertainty as the other members of the cast try to get a handle on the rumors that surround his disappearance. Sadly, his replacement, an initially enthusiastic youngster who is in for two life sentences without parole, later drops out of the production (because he wanted to get his tattoos finished and tries to get them done illegally in prison), and ends up committing suicide by hanging himself by his shoe-laces.

It's a powerful documentary and Shakespeare as therapy works wonders of revelation if not always redemption. You feel bad for the convicts after their enthralling adventure with the Bard, when in the "Updates" section of the "Bonus Features", you learn that almost none of them make parole. But as one of them puts it, at least there's Shakespeare next year.

Trailer