Some ten years before making nonfiction film history with
his expansive and intimate portrait of basketball tryouts Hoop Dreams, documentary
filmmaker Steve James served during his college years as an “Advocate Big
Brother” or mentor to a troubled impoverished youth in Pomona, Illinois named
Stevie Fielding.After the success of Hoop
Dreams, former Big Brother turned director Steve James decided to go back
and check on his former Little Brother Stevie to see how he was
doing.
In what can be best described as a combustible relationship,
Stevie as it turns out isn’t doing much better than how he started out.Formerly an out of wedlock child beaten by
his mother before making the rounds through physically as well as sexually abusive
foster homes and juvenile detention centers, Stevie from afar can be
characterized as poor white trash including but not limited to fixations on
guns, motorcycles and little concern for his physical appearance.By the time production started on the documentary
film, Stevie faced criminal charges involving the sexual assault of a
minor.Worse still, any time choices to
mitigate the sentencing come up, Stevie brazenly refuses maintaining his
innocence while also turning inward.
The story of the codependent relationships we can have by
trying to help someone else who is steadfastly beyond help in their downward
spirals, Stevie like Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man is as much about
the subject as it is the filmmaker’s own personal involvement in it.The harder director Steve James tries to help
in his selfless capacity to set Stevie Fielding on the right path, the more Stevie
doubles down on his self-destruction.A documentary that captures a rare sense of trouble in their central
character not unlike The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On which saw its
protagonist/antagonist repeatedly erupt into violence toward his “interviewees”,
Stevie represents the desire to reach out with a helping hand to someone
who is clearly drowning but won’t reach back. Lensed in rough 16mm 1.33:1 by three cinematographers who
capture both Stevie Fielding and its on/offscreen director interacting with him
and aided by a subtle score by Dirk Powell, Stevie is among the roughest
rural documentaries about troubled poor individuals to preclude The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.Just
watching the film wade through the broken homes of his friends and family makes
you feel inclined to pause the film and take a shower before resuming onward.Still the aim of Stevie isn’t to
disgust but to try and find some measure of humanity lurking within the
irredeemable monster he has become.
A nonjudgmental character study as well as a frank bare-naked
portrait of the ongoing conflict that involves trying to salvage the
unsalvageable, Stevie finds its staying power by not taking sides and
simply examining the problem. As much
about how characters like Stevie come to be as it is about the toxic
pull it can have on the lives of people trying to set them on the right track,
Steve James’ powerful, compulsively watchable documentary portrait is at once disturbing,
emotional and even peppered with moments of unexpected tenderness. Stevie and his tragic self-destructive
and damaging story won’t warm you up to him but at least it might help you
understand what makes people like him tick a little better.
