Sing Sing (2024)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on September 6, 2024

If I told you there was a movie about imprisoned men awaiting clemency in New York’s Sing Sing prison, you would justifiably expect a difficult watch. Certainly, watching a movie set in a state penitentiary stirs up numerous questions, and none have easy answers. When is a person rehabilitated? What penance qualifies as sufficient punishment for a violent crime committed thirty years ago? What does permanent incarceration do to a psyche as time passes and one’s greatest freedom becomes a small window facing outward?

Sing Sing doesn’t answer these questions; I’m not sure it even tries. This is a film about men in prison for the foreseeable future, and we see them bear the brunt of their circumstances as they pay for the transgressions of their former selves from the inside of an oppressive prison compound, but the film refuses to reduce these men to their circumstances. Sing Sing is the setting for Sing Sing but not its subject matter. Sing Sing is a film about men in a place that smothers hope and joy…but who find hope, joy, and purpose anyway.

The men in Sing Sing participate in a Rehabilitation Through the Arts program that puts on theatrical productions within the prison. The film follows the participants as they prepare to stage an original comedy. The story of their show is silly—it features Freddy Krueger, Hamlet, and an Egyptian prince—but their commitment to the craft is serious. They interview prospective cast members and discuss the power of theatre. They collaborate on ideas and encourage one another as they perform while waiting for life-altering legal decisions. They are a team committed to a cause, but they are also a family that leans on one another when things get rough—and they often do. It’s moving to watch their rehearsals and see these very different men set aside so much misery to entertain their peers and nourish their souls.

Leading the cast is Colman Domingo, who portrays the group’s leader, Divine G. Decades into a sentence for a crime he didn’t commit, Divine G is a playwright and mentor but also wounded by the time he’s served. Domingo is magnetic but understated, which matches Sing Sing to a T: there’s plot afoot throughout, but the film progresses so organically it rarely feels scripted. Helping that cause is the remaining cast, packed with no-longer-incarcerated alumni from the RTA program. These men mostly lack Domingo’s professional polish, but that reality elevates the film: every scene feels real because it represents what was real for them.

There’s more to say—I haven’t even mentioned Clarence Maclin’s contributions!—but I can sum up the rest: Sing Sing is excellent. It takes a special film to walk this delicate line between the darkness of incarceration and the joy of theatre, but Sing Sing achieves success on every cinematic level. You laugh, you cry, you feel.

If the film interests you, there are a few more showings this weekend at Tower Theater; that might be it for a while. I can’t recommend it highly enough.