2003, R, 107 minutes

What does a multi-millionaire business trendsetter turned documentary moviemaker pick as his first project? Andrew Jarecki, the cofounder of the popular Moviefone service, was in just this sort of predicament. After some deliberation, he chose to make a film that followed around David Friedman: New York City’s #1 birthday party clown. What could be more innocuous and fun than shadowing a big city party clown around town as he brings smiles to the faces of every little birthday boy and girl he meets?

As it turns out this movie is no fun at all. In fact, it is hard to watch, irritating at times, and it’s almost a guarantee that you will leave the theater feeling confused and angered by the events in the Sundance Film festival 2003 Grand Jury prize winner for documetary film, Capturing the Friedmans.

You see, David is no ordinary clown; as the documentary unfolds, we learn that his father, Arnold, and brother, Jessie, were both arrested in 1987 on charges that they sexually abused children that came to them for computer lessons in the basement of the Friedman’s upper middle class home in Long Island, N.Y. The first instinct is to simply convulse, cover your face and squeal “oh, that’s so gross," but the film doesn’t let the viewer off the hook that easy. Through archival television news footage of the arrests and trial, and more astonishingly - using the Friedman’s own home movies (shot mainly by David) that were made during the most destructive event in the family’s lives - Jarecki crafts a documentary that shows, in disturbing detail, the crumbling of a seemingly unbreakable family unit when it’s foundations are shattered by a father's dark secret.

The child molestation charges and Arnolds own admittance to owning child pornography magazines, as well as his denial that he ever touched a child inappropriately, is the catalyst that sparks the events that are detailed in the film. Attorneys for both defendants as well as prosecuting attorneys are brought forth to sell their cases. We listen to ex-students of Arnold and his son; some who say they are guilty of horrendous crimes, and others who claim Arnold was a meek, sheepish instructor, and neither he nor Jessie touched them in inappropriate ways. We hear psychologists talk of using hypnotherapy to help children remember the awful acts that were allegedly performed on them, while other psychologists say that using hypnosis causes false memories. The film delves into the trial of Arnold and Jessie quite deep. Deep enough in fact to legitimately propose that Arnold and Jessie were victims of a modern day Salem witch hunt.

But the real impact of the film comes through the home movies that David shot as the trial was just beginning, all the way thru to its conclusion. The family bond that seemed so strong in the first few moments of the film are now shown to be disintegrating, as David accuses his mother, and anyone else that doesn’t whole-heartedly believe his father's innocence, of being on the side of the prosecution. As the trial progresses, the family cannot even have a holiday meal without it breaking into a shouting match between the child who cannot conceive of his father as a monster and a mother who fears that her marriage was and is ending up nothing more than a terrible lie, played out to it’s doomed conclusion in front of the local media and townsfolk. As we watch David and his mother Elaine’s relationship devolve from a loving son and doting mother portrayed in family photographs, into barely tolerating being in the same room together, we also see Arnold and Jessie, silent for the most part, resigning themselves to their own fates, as David continually (and to some extent embarrassingly) records their emotions.

While the whole film is disturbing, it’s the scenes in which we see the father and his three sons (the third child, Seth, refused to take part in the film) performing for David’s video camera that make for some of the more bizarre and confusing scenes in the film. One doesn’t expect to see a man convicted of having illegal materials (especially the types of illegal materials Arnold had) cavorting around in the living room, laughing and singing, on the eve of his incarceration, much like they don’t expect to see a young adult playfully doing Monty Python routines on the courthouse steps during the most stressful phase of his trial. There are many scenes like this in the film, and they do inspire a certain amount of anger toward Arnold, David and Jessie. How can their attitude be so seemingly blasé when the events unfurling around them are completely destroying them as a family?

In the end, the viewer is left to make up his own mind regarding this question, as well as to the question of whether or not Arnold and Jessie committed these acts against the children that were under their tutelage. Jarecki wisely refrains from trying to make sympathetic characters out of his subjects. He also doesn’t condemn them, which he could have done just as easily. He has crafted an extremely unique and truly unsettling documentary that rides a fine line that only the best movies of this type achieve; revealing a gripping story without preying on the audience’s emotions.

Again, this is not a movie to be walked into if there are no seats left for Bad Boys II. The subject matter is distasteful and there is no hero to root for. It is hard to sit through, and by its end you are definately worn out from thinking about what you have seen, but it is an expertly handled documentary. If you are a fan of the documentary genre, then this is one you should not miss.