For Variety’s Writers on Writers, Stephen Rohde pens a tribute to “Clemency” (written by Chinonye Chukwu).
The film begins and ends with a close-up of Warden Bernadine Williams, played with wrenching intensity by Alfre Woodard. There is an indelible weariness in her eyes — eyes that have witnessed far too many executions. “Clemency” is her film, but she is hardly the only one suffering in this harrowing story about the soul-killing toll the death penalty is taking on our country. Of course, the greatest toll is exacted from death row inmates themselves. They are the objects of a deeply flawed system of state killing that is so infected by racial and economic disparities and so riddled with fatal errors that we know of at least 166 innocent people wrongfully condemned to death row.
Yet rarely has a film explored the brutalizing effect the death penalty has on everyone else in the system — the wardens,...
The film begins and ends with a close-up of Warden Bernadine Williams, played with wrenching intensity by Alfre Woodard. There is an indelible weariness in her eyes — eyes that have witnessed far too many executions. “Clemency” is her film, but she is hardly the only one suffering in this harrowing story about the soul-killing toll the death penalty is taking on our country. Of course, the greatest toll is exacted from death row inmates themselves. They are the objects of a deeply flawed system of state killing that is so infected by racial and economic disparities and so riddled with fatal errors that we know of at least 166 innocent people wrongfully condemned to death row.
Yet rarely has a film explored the brutalizing effect the death penalty has on everyone else in the system — the wardens,...
- 12/19/2019
- by Stephen Rohde
- Variety Film + TV
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