4 Little Girls (1997)
Grade: 42
"4 Little Girls" is a Spike Lee production and his first documentary. The film is about a 1963 terrorist bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama by segregationalists, killing four black children who were attending Sunday school.
"4 Little Girls" is like no other Spike Lee film. He stays behind the camera, and the political, social and racial aspects of the bombing are downplayed. The focus of the documentary is on the victims, their short lives, and their family members and friends who continue to grieve to this day.
Through the 1950s to mid-1960s, Birmingham was one of the most segregated city in the South. Many members of the police force were also members of the Klan. The 1963 church bombing was the twenty-first for the city. The hate-filled segregationist that was responsible was well-known, but was not put on trial until 1977. He had committed many such bombings, but moved with impunity because segregation was the law of the land. Even the state Governor, George Wallace, was a hard-core segregationist, and is shown in an old video clip blocking the entrance to a school, surrounded by state guardsmen.
The political conflict between the segregationists and civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, and the demonstrations led by young adults (one scene has police turning fire hoses on them) are the most interesting parts of the documentary. I would have graded this documentary higher had this subject been the film's focus.
Instead the focus is on the four girls killed in the church bombing. There are exhaustive interviews with friends and family. When a friend breaks from telling a rembrance to sob, the camera makes certain to capture the lengthy moment of private grief for permanent video preservation. The mother shows her daughters' scout uniform, her dolls, her toys. These scenes, drenched in grief, are significant only because the daughter was brutally murdered, and the murder itself is significant primarily as a milestone in the struggle for equal rights.
One element that bothered me about the documentary is the depiction of the four victims as young children. Three of the four were fourteen years old: teenagers, not little girls. The fourth victim was eleven. The reverend Jesse Jackson refers to them as "innocent babies." Certainly they were innocent, and no one of any age deserves to die in an act of terrorism, but they were not babies. Bill Cosby has a brief scene where he states that the victims could have been Harvard graduates and could have become doctors. Well, they could have become U.S. Presidents, but it isn't necessary to speculate about their future in order to get across the tragedy and injustice of their deaths.
I know that I come across as insensitive by criticizing "4 Little Girls." I realize that I may be the only person who has seen it and not given it a very positive review. However, I believe that it is wrong to raise the grade of a film because of its subject, no matter how important.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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