Monday 16 January 2017

REVIEW - O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (EZRA EDELMAN)


Ezra Edelman's O.J.: Made in America arrives as though to prospectively chastise its fellow historical documentaries - now there's no excuse, now you have a bona fide benchmark for thoroughness. It may unfold with simple, unsurprising ease, confirming our suspicions rather than provoking new ones, but this is an essential part of this masterful documentary's supremacy. Edelman has tracked his story back to its true origin, ignoring all of the false leads, jettisoning all of the extraneous detail, refusing to manufacture suggestion and subtext, instead allowing it to seep out of the seams of reality. O.J.: Made in America is a testament to truth, and a bold, though resolutely partisan, examination of how the nature of truth can cause it to mean brazenly contradictory things to different people. Edelman is safe in the partisanism of his approach, himself functioning as a barrister for that truth, using hard evidence to bolster his arguments, never permitting his arguments to determine the character of his evidence. He has it both ways in O.J.: Made in America, smartly and objectively diagnosing the guilt in every human being, that he might expose the faults on every side of the debate. If truth is the ultimate defence, it's also the ultimate indictment; the scope of Edelman's investigations, and his dedication toward sincerity in his storytelling leave the deniers to hang themselves with their own rope. This is an education we're receiving, and those ignoramuses who'd rather not be educated can keep their idiocy to themselves! This is a timely documentary that would yet be equally so at any date in history, and a peerlessly thorough document of the whole truth, and nothing but it!

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