When you get a movie like Sing Sing, which blends elements of narrative and documentary filmmaking, there can be a tension between the two disciplines as they fight against each other. It’s not always as seamless as you’d hope. Sing Sing isn’t much different, even if its spirit and empathy carry it to its most effective moments. The film stars Colman Domingo, an actor whose greatness was recently awarded with an Oscar nomination for his performance in the movie Rustin – a flat biopic that showcased Domingo but mostly through contrast of how mediocre everything else in the film was. Rustin is quintessential Oscar bait and, in a way, so is Sing Sing, but there’s something much more interesting happening in the latter film. It’s not just that director Greg Kwedar is casting mostly non-actors in the ensemble, but the way he orbits them around Domingo creates a wonderful tapestry.

Sing Sing is a film about acting. More broadly, it’s about the power of artistic expression and the therapeutic properties of performance. More specifically, it’s about the “Rehabilitation Through the Arts” program – or RTA – within Sing Sing correctional facility in New York. Domingo plays Divine G, a prisoner who takes a leadership role within the RTA, a theater group where inmates come together to perform a play of their choosing. Their director, Brent (Paul Raci), comes in from outside to help sculpt performance as well as giving these hardened men an emotional outlet to focus their anxious minds. Brent is in charge, but he’s more than happy to let Divine G grab the steering wheel, helping his fellow prisoners find the right strategies to remember lines and cultivate effective acting.

Divine G and his close friend Mike Mike (Sean San José) decide to recruit the hard-edged Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin) to their group after watching the ways he hustles newly entered prisoners for money. When they take him aside to measure his interest, he surprises them by quoting Shakespeare. When Divine Eye first enters the group he scoffs at their holistic approach, feels embarrassed by the abandon of their exercises. It’s up to Divine G to teach him that vulnerability makes the best actors, a trait Divine Eye stays away from like the plague. Outside of RTA, Divine G spends his time writing plays, and studying up for his own clemency hearing. He claims innocence over the crime he was imprisoned for, and he thinks he’s finally found the proof he’s always needed.

Divine Eye thinks Divine G is silly for even considering exiting the maximum security walls of Sing Sing, but Divine G teaches him that with the right mindset one can escape their prison in a multitude of ways. The film’s script – by Kwedar and Clint Bentley – is based on the book “The Sing Sing Follies”, by John H. Richardson, which is the true story of RTA and Divine G’s inspired theater group. The program has an impressive record of true rehabilitation amongst the men of Sing Sing, and the film’s cast is made almost exclusively of former inmates who were actual participants in RTA. This includes Maclin himself, as well as David “Dap” Giraudy, Patrick “Preme” Griffin, Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez, and Sean “Dino” Johnson, among many others. All these men play versions of themselves, taking the skills that RTA nurtured and bringing them to the big screen.

Divine G’s clemency hearing and his mentorship of Divine Eye make up the plot of this film, but most of its substance lies in its characters’ various interactions. Sing Sing is at its most awkward when it feels obligated to have a story, and it’s at its best when it loosely gives us a glimpse into how RTA reshapes these men’s lives. Seeing them give themselves up to art is incredibly moving. Together, they learn that making yourself susceptible to emotion can be its own form of freedom, freedom from prisons real and imagined. It feels like a glib insight, but Domingo and Kwedar really sell it through the performances of these men who are living to tell the tale. If Sing Sing is a docudrama that succeeds more as a documentary than a drama, it still achieves a true emotional catharsis by the end, giving Divine G – and the audience – a much needed release.

Rustin was proof that the Academy is ready to honor Domingo in any ol’ thing, and there’s a bit of a cynicism to the way that A24 is running this film’s press through a purely awards-baiting perspective. Luckily, Sing Sing is an effective film on its own merits, and Domingo gives what may be the best performance of his career. The film and its star gets its major tearjerking moment, but it does so without relying too heavily on sentimentality. More than anything, it’s proof that Domingo has become an actor that requires a showcase, that his presence comes with it a measure of elevation to the material. His work alongside Maclin and the rest of the cast feels like a masterstroke of humanist performance – a true testament to “acting is reacting”. This is a movie about performance, and Domingo’s work speaks to its power when done well and done correctly.

 

Directed by Greg Kwedar