Parents' Guide to An American Crime

This movie is a difficult watch. For many, it will be hard not seeing An American Crime as simply a series of increasingly horrible scenes of torture. The story is a dramatic retelling of Indiana's most terrible crime that happened in 1965, but the film struggles to find a bigger lesson beyond the stomach-churning tragedy, unfairness, and brutality of Sylvia's torture and murder. And despite the performances being top caliber, many viewers will find that Sylvia doesn't get justice here. Her character never gets to resist, fight back, or be much of anything except a vessel for suffering. Her personality is simply being a very nice and polite teen girl. She mainly apologizes, cries, screams, and suffers. The film's main perspective seems to be, "look at how horrible these people were to Sylvia." Do we feel bad for Sylvia and anger toward all these people who treated her so badly? Of course!

But what is, exactly, the value of showing scene after scene of torture? To make the viewer really feel Sylvia's suffering? At least films like this prompt an interesting question: Is there a better way to represent tragedies or stories like this one? How much should a film show or focus on torture, abuse, and child violence (in terms of screentime and severity)? Finally, many viewers might also feel let down by the ending, and it's confusing as to why the film chooses to diverge from reality at the very end by suggesting that Gertrude eventually admitted responsibility for Sylvia's death when she never did. Why do this? It feels like a disservice to the actual victims of the case. Nevertheless, be warned. This film gives you a premise: Want to hear a tragic story? To hear it to the end, you just have to also sit through a lot of torture. Many viewers might be better just reading about it.