INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Web exclusive: Small stories told in wondrous ways

 

“This American Life”
Sundays, beginning May 4, 10 p.m.
Showtime

“An American Crime”
May 10, 9 p.m.
Showtime

I know, I know, I know — you don’t have Showtime and you don’t want to pay more for television than you already are.

But really, you should find a way to see “This American Life.” The TV adaptation of the long-running National Public Radio show does a remarkable job of telling small stories in the most wondrous ways.

Its second season of six half-hour episodes begins Sunday with the story of a Florida man afflicted with spinal muscular atrophy. He’s wheeled around in what looks like a high-tech hand truck and communicates mostly through facial gestures and by using his fingertip to type. Tapping out a sentence takes him three minutes.

His mind is exceedingly agile, though, and because technology has improved, he’s lived to age 27 so far — and wants, as most 27-year-olds do, to get out from his mom’s care. So he has hired an assistant and has gotten himself a girlfriend by placing an ad on Craigslist. (She found his perfect spelling and punctuation “sexy.”) And he goes on.

His story is told without pity and, just as impressively, without awe. Not that you won’t feel either or both, but Ira Glass and his compatriots let the story unfold gently and naturally without telling the viewer what to think.

The second episode focuses on an Iraqi and a Bulgarian, both of whom attempt to make sense of American attitudes. For the Bulgarian, it’s about lawn care and why we — and especially his wife — are so obsessed with mowing the lawn.

For the Iraqi, who fled his country four years ago, his concern is the war. So he sets up a “Talk to an Iraqi” booth in public places and chats with people of all different political persuasions.

Several current members of the armed forces stop by, mostly to tell him that they feel good about their work. One, whose mission included time at Abu Ghraib, justifies the American invasion of Iraq by explaining that “terrorists flew planes into buildings in his hometown.” Give the Iraqi credit — he doesn’t try to strangle him.

The Iraqi man says he used to think life under Saddam Hussein was hell. But now, with his business and home lost and his family scattered around the globe, it looks like heaven.

The most poignant moment comes when an 11-year-old girl sits down to talk. Her father is in Iraq and she’s wanted to speak with an Iraqi for three and a half years so she could apologize for the United States “walking into his country like we owned it.”

It’s worth getting Showtime just to hear that.

And speaking of Showtime, it’s also the place for “An American Crime,” which recalls one of Indiana history’s most heinous stories: the 1965 torture murder of Sylvia Likens at the hands of Gertrude Baniszewski and her family.

The film opens by saying, “The following is an interpretation of events based on 'Baniszewski v. The State of Indiana,' 1966. All testimony comes from court transcripts.”

“Interpretation” is the operative word.

Yes, in the summer of 1965, carnival workers Lester and Betty Likens did leave their daughters, 16-year-old Sylvia and 15-year-old Jenny, at 3850 E. New York St. with Gertrude Baniszewski, a woman they’d just met. And Sylvia, played by Ellen Page of “Juno” fame, did have some run-ins with Gertrude’s 17-year-old daughter, Paula (though not exactly as they’re portrayed here). And Sylvia was tortured to death (though in far worse fashion than the filmmakers choose to show).

But the story is incomplete as shown here, and it includes a couple of bizarre, off-putting fictions. The worst may be the dream sequence in which Paula Baniszewski helps Sylvia escape, and neighbor Richard Hobbs — who was among those convicted in Likens’ death — drives her to Portage, Ind., to be with her parents. For good measure, Gertrude pops up like some horror movie ghoul as they’re getting away.

Equally egregious is having Catherine Keener portray Gertrude Baniszewski as more of a poor, downtrodden, overly medicated single mother rather than the psychopathic nutjob she unquestionably was. Writers Tommy O’Haver and Irene Turner appear to be trying to insert some shades of gray into what truly was a black and white horror.

The movie also is relatively kind to the neighbors who turned their back on Sylvia’s screams and to the Likens girls’ parents, who left their daughters with a woman who had seven kids (only six in the movie) and lived in what prosecutors later called “a cesspool.”

Unless you like watching torture, there isn’t much good to be said for “An American Crime.” In fact, the only plus I can find is that when Indiana people speak of “Hoosier values,” now the world will know what they mean.