Cinema and literature have explored the themes of THE HOUSE I LIVE IN many times before. If you talk about "war on drugs" you'll inevitably find that everything is related, from the kid who wants to follow the steps of the most recognized gangster in the ghetto (something similar to one of the stories in Garrone's GOMORRA) to the penal system debate (not long ago Werner Herzog touched this theme with INTO THE ABYSS).
THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, documentary about the war on drugs in the United States, take us to many states, shows us the perspective of all the involved in this complex situation, from the recluse that trafficked with methamphetamines to the cop that appeared in the series COPS. Even when the documentary's duration is only 2 hours, it seems that director Eugene Jarecki had enough material for a 10-hour miniseries, so with a single viewing it may be a bit difficult to retain every one of the stories here featured.
Jarecki began his project thanks to a personal issue: the African American woman that took care of him when he was a child saw her family being destroyed by drugs. The director quickly delimitates his theme and decides only to explore his country – the Mexican war on drugs, for instance, is mentioned only once, simply to conclude that the problem is much bigger in the United States. Jarecki never questions where the drugs that enter to his country come from, or why people use them – that's somewhat clear: people involved in the drug traffic or use do it "out of pain", as one of the interviewed persons remarks. So, the objective of the documentary is to find out what causes that pain.
We get concise answers and thoughts, that shows an impressive brutality and at the same time contradict the final message, sort-of encouraging, of the film. That message is, by the way, illustrated with the image of an African American woman watching on her TV, with a smile, the first victory of Barack Obama back in 2008. Yes, the same woman that took care of young Jarecki.
THE WIRE (2002-2008), brilliant but not very popular American series, has been described as a cop show that doesn't move fast, with tons of action and gunshots. The series' big amount of information can be a little difficult to digest at the beginning, but we are talking of an ambitious project that starts with a simple detective case and ends exploring many aspects of the American society (in Baltimore specifically), being the drug trafficking one that stands out.
One of the interviewed persons with more presence in the documentary is actually David Simon, former police journalist for the Baltimore Sun and also creator of the mentioned TV series. Undoubtedly, Simon was a huge inspiration for Jarecki, and both works, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN and THE WIRE, complement each other. If you know the fiction, watching the documentary is like returning to the same places (the housing projects) and also to some situations (the cops that prefer doing quick drug-related arrests rather than working on bigger, more important cases).
Another person that stands out is one historian with an expertise on Abraham Lincoln. With his look from those civil war years, this man take us by hand to give a look to the history of drugs in the United States, going till the days when the Chinese people (who were directly related with the use of opium) began to took the jobs of the white Americans. The stock footage shows us the classic American propaganda, and Jarecki finds some answers and parallelisms in the type of political speech that was used by someone like Nixon.
Like I already mentioned, the principal virtue of THE HOUSE I LIVE IN is that it provide us concise answers – even a theme like the origin of the ghettos is explained better than ever. In fact, this Lincoln look-alike man is who concludes in a brutal way the war on drugs theme, and more than Jarecki's own sort-of conclusion, this is the one that will stay with us – the war on drugs is an holocaust that, unlike the other holocausts, has evolved and no longer distinguish races, only social classes.
*Watched it on 16 February, 2013
THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, documentary about the war on drugs in the United States, take us to many states, shows us the perspective of all the involved in this complex situation, from the recluse that trafficked with methamphetamines to the cop that appeared in the series COPS. Even when the documentary's duration is only 2 hours, it seems that director Eugene Jarecki had enough material for a 10-hour miniseries, so with a single viewing it may be a bit difficult to retain every one of the stories here featured.
Jarecki began his project thanks to a personal issue: the African American woman that took care of him when he was a child saw her family being destroyed by drugs. The director quickly delimitates his theme and decides only to explore his country – the Mexican war on drugs, for instance, is mentioned only once, simply to conclude that the problem is much bigger in the United States. Jarecki never questions where the drugs that enter to his country come from, or why people use them – that's somewhat clear: people involved in the drug traffic or use do it "out of pain", as one of the interviewed persons remarks. So, the objective of the documentary is to find out what causes that pain.
We get concise answers and thoughts, that shows an impressive brutality and at the same time contradict the final message, sort-of encouraging, of the film. That message is, by the way, illustrated with the image of an African American woman watching on her TV, with a smile, the first victory of Barack Obama back in 2008. Yes, the same woman that took care of young Jarecki.
THE WIRE (2002-2008), brilliant but not very popular American series, has been described as a cop show that doesn't move fast, with tons of action and gunshots. The series' big amount of information can be a little difficult to digest at the beginning, but we are talking of an ambitious project that starts with a simple detective case and ends exploring many aspects of the American society (in Baltimore specifically), being the drug trafficking one that stands out.
One of the interviewed persons with more presence in the documentary is actually David Simon, former police journalist for the Baltimore Sun and also creator of the mentioned TV series. Undoubtedly, Simon was a huge inspiration for Jarecki, and both works, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN and THE WIRE, complement each other. If you know the fiction, watching the documentary is like returning to the same places (the housing projects) and also to some situations (the cops that prefer doing quick drug-related arrests rather than working on bigger, more important cases).
Another person that stands out is one historian with an expertise on Abraham Lincoln. With his look from those civil war years, this man take us by hand to give a look to the history of drugs in the United States, going till the days when the Chinese people (who were directly related with the use of opium) began to took the jobs of the white Americans. The stock footage shows us the classic American propaganda, and Jarecki finds some answers and parallelisms in the type of political speech that was used by someone like Nixon.
Like I already mentioned, the principal virtue of THE HOUSE I LIVE IN is that it provide us concise answers – even a theme like the origin of the ghettos is explained better than ever. In fact, this Lincoln look-alike man is who concludes in a brutal way the war on drugs theme, and more than Jarecki's own sort-of conclusion, this is the one that will stay with us – the war on drugs is an holocaust that, unlike the other holocausts, has evolved and no longer distinguish races, only social classes.
*Watched it on 16 February, 2013