Ken Burns’ documentary The Central Park Five departs from his usual style, perhaps because it’s a collaboration with his daughter Sarah (who previously wrote a book about the subject of this film) and her husband David McMahon; or perhaps because it’s not a look back at America’s distantly painful past, but rather about a fresher wound; a rush to judgment in a city on edge in 1989. New York City was dealing escalating racial tension, exacerbated by gang violence, police brutality, and vigilantism.
The Central Park Five tells its story largely via interviews with the Five themselves, supplemented with archival news footage and atmospheric shots of the locations where these events took place. Missing from the film—because they declined to participate—are the rape victim, her actual attacker, or anyone from the police or the prosecution. And though there’s explanatory on-screen text throughout, the movie has no narrator. So unlike the comprehensive, authoritative voice of most of Burns’ documentaries, The Central Park Five is more subjective, bordering on claustrophobic.
That closed-off quality costs The Central Park Five some drama. It never expands its scope or meaning over the course of its two-hour running time. But the specifics make the story powerful regardless. Yet, the facts of the case mattered less than what it represented: a city fighting back against the thugs, whether they were guilty of anything or not.
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