Named after the landmark Supreme Court ruling Gideon vs. Wainwright that established the right to counsel for all citizens, Dawn Porter's touching and intricate documentary, Gideon's Army, follows Travis Williams, Brandy Alexander, and June Hardwick, three young public defenders dedicated to defending those which society offers little protection. Working extremely long hours on very low pay, Gideon's Army reveals how these three idealistic lawyers fight in a system that is reaching its breaking point. With case-loads in the hundreds at any given time, public defenders simply don't have the time, money or resources to give their clients the time necessary to form a proper case, with Gideon's Army revealing the inherent biases of a broken criminal justice system. These lawyers struggle to even be effective given their workloads, and one of the film's greatest attributes is its ability to capture the optimism, dedication, and pain that each of these three public defenders experience. I particularly found Travis Williams to be an endlessly compelling character, a self-made man who came from very little to become what he is today. Travis is endlessly dedicated to speaking for the voiceless, being a very inspirational character and a strong reminder of 'good guys' which do exist in this massive bureaucratic system. We see how another one of the public defenders, Brandy Alexander, fears she is becoming completely desensitized as a human-being, with one of her confidants even explaining to her that "to rescue someone for hell you often have to go there". Featuring a quiet loneliness, Dawn Porter's Gideon's Army argues that the sanctity of human liberty itself is at stake, juxtaposing the divergent paths that exist in a system that views the defendants as inconsequential, even though each case couldn't be of more paramount importance to those individuals whose lives hang in the balance of a court's decision.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
|