Garrett Bradley (2020)
Sibil Fox met Rob Richardson, her future husband, when both were in high school. In 1997, they married and moved ahead with plans to open a hip-hop clothing store in Shreveport, Louisiana. When their investors pulled out the couple in desperation decided to rob a bank, with the help of Rob’s nephew. They were caught and charged. Sibil pleaded guilty, was sentenced to twelve years in prison and was released after serving three and a half. Rob was tried and sentenced to sixty years’ imprisonment, without parole. After she came out of prison in 2002, Sibil dedicated herself to raising her children, all boys, and to fighting for her husband’s release. She also began to videotape family life in the hope that Rob might, one day, be able to partake of these family memories. She first came into contact with the documentarian Garrett Bradley in 2016, in connection with a short film the latter was making. When Sibil lent her the collection of tapes she’d made over the years, Bradley embarked on a documentary feature about the Richardsons’ lives and struggle. Time is the result.
Fox Rich, as Sibil now calls herself, has campaigned not just on behalf of her husband but for penal reform more largely. As African Americans, she and Rob have been on the receiving end of an iniquitous prison system that was also the subject of another recent documentary, Ava DuVernay’s 13th (2016). Garrett Bradley combines footage from Fox’s home videos with descriptions of her continuing work as an advocate and motivational speaker. (Both parts are in black and white.) The film’s genesis and content, and the woman at its centre, are remarkable yet Time, almost universally praised by critics, is exasperating. What sort of a documentary is it that, after you’ve watched, necessitates an online search for the key facts of the matter? The information above about Fox’s plea bargain and Rob’s case going to trial, for example, comes from the internet, not the film.
Dramas based on real-life events sometimes make you think they’d have been more honest and instructive as documentaries (albeit they’d also be seen by fewer people that way). The non-fiction components of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology were a recent instance of this. Time, more unusually, is technically a documentary but operates somewhat like a fictional drama. Fox’s home videos function as flashbacks. The narrative progresses towards the heroine’s eventual, against-the-odds triumph. You’re more conscious of this because the factual context and details are skimpy. Bradley hasn’t made a long film (eighty minutes) but, once you realise she’s not going to be more informative, the main point of spending time on Time is looking forward to the happy ending you’d expect in a fictional piece.
A drama worth the name, however, would explore its protagonist much more thoroughly than Time explores Fox Rich – might, say, consider the degree of conflict between her fight for justice and her domestic role. We see Fox’s elder sons involved in the campaign for Rob’s release but there’s no indication of whether their mother’s public appearances have increased only in recent years, as her six children have got older – and not a whisper of tension within the household about the demands of Fox’s activism. How come she gave birth to her younger sons during her husband’s years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary? We wouldn’t necessarily think less of Fox’s wifely devotion because she hasn’t lived like a nun the past two decades but Garrett Bradley simply ignores the issue. The miscarriage of justice in this case consists not in the wrongful conviction of an innocent person but in the outrageously disproportionate length of their prison sentence. There’s a sequence in which Fox is publicly contrite, in front of the pastor and congregation of the church she attends, about the offence she committed alongside Rob. (She drove the getaway car from the scene of the crime – another fact gleaned online.) Yet we get no sense of how they made their decision to carry out armed robbery – who was the prime mover? – or what Fox feels about the length of her husband’s sentence relative to hers.
The reason for Time’s reticence on these potentially complicating elements is clear enough. Garrett Bradley’s film has plenty of artful touches. The narrative’s movement between past and present helps point up different aspects of its one-word title. Rob is doing time. Fox’s videos reflect how much time is passing. As a visual record, they redeem that time. Bradley’s main purpose, though, is to endorse as well as observe Fox’s campaign. Instead of the abundant statistics of the much superior 13th, Time supplies a string of assertions by its impassioned protagonist. She describes the American prison system as, for example, a ‘personal vendetta’ on the part of ‘the white man [who] keeps you there until he figures it’s time for you to get out’. It’s possible to accept the essential truth of Fox’s arguments while still feeling a resistance to her extravagant rhetoric – which Bradley does nothing to interrogate. For me, her documentary is the latest addition to a quickly growing list of films, factual and fictional, that are feted not because they’re coherent, convincing cinema but because their political point of view is compelling.
When Fox Rich talks about crime being a consequence of socio-economic conditions, you may find yourself asking whether this is meant to explain her and Rob’s felony – whether loss of funding for a business venture is ‘poverty’ in the generally understood sense of the word? You may even dare to wonder if her criminal record doesn’t slightly compromise Fox’s moral authority. But you’ll also wonder at her fortitude and how anyone in her circumstances could succeed in bringing up a family, holding down a job and fighting a cause at the same time. Besides, Fox is well prepared to disarm criticism. As she tells an audience on a lecture tour, it’s only to someone who’s faced the kind of adversity she’s faced that she’s prepared to concede the argument, ‘You do the crime, you do the time’.
Another respect in which Time resembles a Hollywood dramatisation of a battle for justice is that its leading lady is highly photogenic. She’s also highly aware of the camera. Both qualities come through in sequences showing her repeated phone calls for news on Rob’s latest attempt to be considered for parole, throughout which Garrett Bradley holds Fox’s face in close-up. Her sons – especially the eldest boys, twins she was carrying at the time of the bank robbery – are more quietly charismatic (and a credit to their mother). Rob, for obvious reasons, isn’t much in evidence until his eventual release from jail. He was granted clemency in September 2018. Wearing a T-shirt proclaiming ‘Never Give Up’, he’s barely through the front door of the family home before he seems to be preparing to follow his wife into a career as a motivational speaker.
Early on in the narrative, Fox Rich affirms her belief in the American Dream. Its enduring appeal, even for people like her caught up in American Nightmare, is quite something. One of Time’s most striking features is how strongly it promotes Fox’s individual as well as moral enterprise. (Conjecture, of course, but perhaps that was part of the deal she struck with Garrett Bradley when supplying her home videos?) A recent article by Kriti Merotra on the website www.thecinemaholic.com reinforces the film’s celebration of Fox as a mover and shaker – to comical effect. Merotra’s article starts off sounding like a review but ends up as PR for Fox and her husband:
‘With degrees in Bachelor of Science and Master’s in Public Administration from Gambling State University, Fox is well qualified to do what she is doing. Her first-hand experience of seeing how families suffer from the hardships associated with crime and punishment also plays a massive role in her way of working. Fox and Rob, now public figures, also have a merchandise line, which you can find on their website.’
7 January 2021
