Farah Bakaari: An upside to watching Sing Sing on demand was that I could take many breaks—to cry, to rewind, to re-read bits of Shakespeare. It took me three attempts over two days to watch all 105 minutes of it. I must have watched the rehearsal scene where Divine Eye finally nails the Hamlet soliloquy as the camera follows him around the room in a single continuous shot at least a dozen times. I cherished the rehearsal scenes the most because for a brief moment—as the men practice, and debate ideas, and disagree about genre, and dance, and try on costumes—both you and they could almost, almost (though never quite) forget where the rehearsal is taking place. Sing Sing is a gorgeous film about the expansive power of art, brotherhood, radical tenderness, and just how damn hard it is to do comedy. 

Maybe because it is in my immigrant nature to always want to crack the code and comply with the explicit and implicit rules of any given situation, but I love movies that begin with a newcomer confidently questioning established consensus and accepted hierarchies. Here, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (played by the real Clarence Maclin) joins the theatre program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Westchester County, New York, and immediately causes a ruckus by suggesting that the troupe perform a comedy instead of their usual dramas. “I mean like every day we dealing with trauma, drama. Every day we got tragedy. I mean, I think the population just might appreciate a comedy.” The suggestion worries the group, especially Divine G (played by Colman Domingo) not because they think comedy is frivolous, but because they know it is hard. Divine Eye knows this most of all as he auditions for the only dramatic role in the new comic script, the role of Hamlet. Divine G, who also wanted the role of Hamlet, confronts Divine Eye, reminding him that doing a comedy was his suggestion. “Comedy is very difficult, man” is Divine Eye’s rather straightforward response. 

Earlier in the film, Divine G’s closest friend Mike Mike consoles him about the group’s decision to do a comedy. “It will be a lot easier than all that dying we normally do,” he tells him through the thin concrete wall they share. It is not entirely clear if Mike Mike means the dying they perform in the dramatic plays they usually stage, or the social death they are made to endure daily behind the walls of Sing Sing. 

It would have been easy (and right) for Sing Sing to have focused on the immense injustice and inhumanity of the prison system. And there are moments in the film where we get glimpses of this blatant cruelty—like when the board of the clemency hearing accuses Divine G of acting, or when he walks back into his cell after “routine inspection” and lets out an exhausted sigh as he faces the mess the prison officers have made of his space, the carelessness with which his belongings, his writing were handled. Or, consider the scene where late one hot night, Mike Mike and Divine G talk through their shared wall about their upbringings and the stories of their names. Mike Mike regrets breaking his grandmother’s heart with his drug habit, and Divine G talks about giving up ballet “once the fellas found out in the neighborhood” because he could not bear the homophobic slurs. But then the camera pans out of the intimate close up of the characters faces into the hallway where you see the row of tiny cells, cramped and claustrophobic, a reminder that confined inside each of them are entire histories wrapped up in a name and recorded in verse. 

In an early rehearsal scene when Divine Eye is struggling to get into character, Divine G gives him a note that serves as a kind of a proposition for the film itself: “Anger is the easiest thing to play,” says Divine G. “What is more complicated is to play hurt. That helps you name the thing.” It would have been easy for Sing Sing to play angry, and this might have been something liberal America would have wanted, so they could cathect on Black pain and congratulate themselves for their ability to sympathize, or worse be shamed. But the film is not interested in instructing its audience, and even less interested in scolding them. Its duty, instead, lies with its characters, who are also its subjects (almost all of the actors play themselves in the movie) for whom the daily negotiations with captivity do not need to be spelled out. Sing Sing is more taken by the worlds these men make on and offstage, so they may take flight in each other’s devotion. 

***

Sydney Tunstall: Since its release, Sing Sing has been lauded for its empathetic and humanizing approach to a story about a group of incarcerated men enrolled in a Rehabilitation Through the Arts program (RTA) at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. Based on a true story and boasting a cast comprised primarily of program alumni playing versions of themselves, Sing Sing presents a meta-narrative about the redemptive power of art. The camera plays an interesting role in the film’s humanizing project. Often acting as an extension of an external audience gaze, the camera in Sing Sing produces the film’s sense of humanity, often without challenging that gaze.

Shot on 16mm film using mostly handheld cameras, Sing Sing constructs a visual language that is meant to cultivate a sense of authenticity and intimacy between the film’s audience and its characters. In constructing this particular visual framework, Sing Sing often places the burden of representation on its incarcerated subjects, using the camera to prove their sincerity to a presumably skeptical audience. The film’s group scenes, which depict the ensemble participating in a range of theatre exercises to help them get into character by connecting with their emotions, are imbued with a warmth that seemingly radiates from each character. As the characters sit in a circle of chairs completing a mindfulness exercise, the camera moves in close to capture their responses, photographing the men in lingering close up shots that place each of them at the center of the frame and the story. This camerawork, so aesthetically and emotionally moving, also functions as an empathy-building exercise for the audience. 

In constructing this visual relationship between characters and audience, Sing Sing seems to suggest that the film’s humanizing process is at least partially predicated on the ability of its audience to see these men as human. In one of the film’s most poignant scenes, a character implores a reluctant new member to open up to the group’s process saying, “We’re here to become human again.” Though the line is spoken to another character, the close up framing of the shot directs the appeal to the film’s audience. This moment sends a subtle, if unintended, message that the process of humanization that these characters undergo is not fully for themselves or each other, but for an external gaze.

The closest the film comes to commenting on this gaze is during a scene in which Colman Domingo’s character, Divine G, attends a clemency hearing. Seated in a metal chair across from the panel tasked with determining his fate, Divine G is forced to defend his character when a panel member suggests that he might be using the acting skills he has developed through RTA for ulterior motives. Here, the camera once again moves in close to capture the sadness and shock that blossoms on Domingo’s face in response to the accusation, using the close up to affirm the sincerity of Divine G’s character. Even as the film critiques the panel, it affirms the gaze of the film’s audience. Both are imbued with the power, whether via the state or the representational logics of the camera, to arbitrarily determine Divine G’s worthiness for redemption and humanity.

Watching Sing Sing, I couldn’t help but think about Nickel Boys, another film that constructs a unique visual language to tackle the system of incarceration. These films diverge, however, around the question of gaze. In Nickel Boys, the camera functions partially to critique its audience, challenging how and what they see in a story about the structural abuse of incarcerated Black boys. In Sing Sing, that same gaze does not exist to be critiqued, but rather to inform how and in what ways characters can appear on screen. 

Farah Bakaari is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University. She wishes she were not a slow writer so she can bake more for friends.

Sydney Tunstall is a PhD candidate in English and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Michigan where she is writing a dissertation on Black lesbian cultural production, genre, and crisis. She thinks she would make a really great WNBA WAG if any WNBA players are reading this and interested.

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