‘An American Crime” (8 p.m. Saturday, Showtime) is a difficult film to watch.
It depicts an abuse case that came to light in Indiana in 1965, and it’s probably impossible to sit through this quietly wrenching film without your stomach tying itself into knots.
But Ellen Page and Catherine Keener, the film’s two leads, give such honest performances that this dark, engrossing drama will likely be of interest to fans of their typically fine work.
Page’s warmth and vulnerability infused the whip smart “Juno” with far more compassion than it might have had otherwise. But in “An American Crime,” she’s not playing a character whose heart is safely tucked away behind a wall of defensive irony.
Page’s character, teenager Sylvia Likens, is a wide-eyed, sweet young woman who, along with her polio-afflicted sister, is left with a large, struggling family while the girls’ parents go on the road with a carnival.
The head of their new household, Gertrude Baniszewski (Keener), has half a dozen children of her own, including a baby by her 22-year-old ex-boyfriend. Her husband is long gone, and her illness and dependence on drink and a mind-altering “medicine” have left her on the edge of sanity.
Nothing is amiss at first and Sylvia has fun goofing around with Gertrude’s kids. But the teenager soon runs afoul of this strangely vindictive woman. The abuse that Sylvia endures is harder to watch given that Page has made her seem so innocent and kind. Sylvia is confused by the dark turn that her relationship with Gertrude takes, but she’s terrified to leave, given that her sister is handicapped and even more vulnerable.
The film doesn’t set out to demonize Gertrude, and the restrained performance by Keener goes a long way to explaining the actions of this woman, whose life and mind are disintegrating. Yet there is something about such horrific abuse that can’t be explained. What’s clear, though, is that Gertrude’s edict about Sylvia needing to “learn her lesson” gives many kids (not just her own) the license to enforce some sick ideas about discipline.
The dialogue for the courtroom scenes, which feature Bradley Whitford (“The West Wing”) as a capable district attorney, was taken from court transcripts, and where possible director Tommy O’Haver and co-writer Irene Turner hewed to the known facts of the case brought against Gertrude. One thing the press kit makes clear is that many neighbors knew of the abuse of Sylvia yet did nothing to stop it. That point could have been better made in the film.
But it may not be possible to ever understand what drives adults and even children to commit abuse — or simply ignore it. Thanks to O’Haver’s sad yet well-made film, perhaps our understanding of the inexplicable and unforgivable has been expanded a little.
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