HARD KNOCK LIFE. A film Review.
New York Press
September 7, 2005
HARD KNOCK LIFE
No agit prop at Riker's High.
By A.R. Brook Lynn
Hard knock life Rikers High Produced, Directed, and shot by Victor Buhler Airing September 13th at 8:30PM, Showtime Channel
I sat down to watch Rikers High, Victor Buhler's docudrama about Island Academy, the high school inside New York's main jail, certain it would be a typical agit-prop condemnation of abstract societal woes, a two hour-long evasion of criminal culpability for the juvenile prisoners who are the film's subjects. But it isn't—it's something quite different and rather impressive.
One of the surprises is how similar Island Academy is to your average New York City public high school, student body included. Still, Buhler's choice of inmates—a rapper, a poet and an artist—is a bit manufactured, given the awfully limited time he devotes to the more thuggish characters in the school. Yet in considering these three cinematic characters "Rikers High" is frank.
Our rapper, William, who was imprisoned for mugging a woman with a cigarette lighter, is released halfway through the film, giving us a view of a prison afterlife wrought with indecision and indifference. Having failed to complete his GED at Island Academy, and expecting a second child, he enters the preamble to what seems to be an inevitable reemergence into criminal life.
The poet, Shawn, is a bright 17 year-old who was convicted of armed robbery. Shawn understands the importance of an education more than most of his classmates, and he becomes the valedictorian of Island Academy's graduating class and professes his ambition to be a philosopher.
Andre, our artist, was convicted of arson for having set a car on fire in an insurance scam coordinated by one of his family members, Andre is the most child-like of the three even though he is the oldest, and transferred to the adult ward on his 19th birthday.
There are no title cards listing statistics on racial percentages or the average income of inmate's families. Buhler instead shows you that the majority of faces are black and Hispanic and leaves it at that. As the students of Island Academy find momentary reprieve in the gaiety of their graduation ceremonies, so do we, thankfully. But Buhler doesn't end it there.
He takes us into the boys' homes and reminds us that even the brightest, kindest and most talented will not get a Hollywood ending. Our talented young rapper does not get the big record contract, our artist does not get away from his indifferent mother and abusive father, and our poet does not go straight on to college. The desire for a pat and packaged, life-affirming conclusion goes unfulfilled. Buhler remembers that this is not fiction.
