Eugene Jarecki’s superb documentary, The House I Live In, draws a definitive reaction from those sensitive to injustice and cultural imbalance. The film played as part of the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival last week. A Q and A followed the screening and it was very clear Jarecki crafted a provocative documentary from observing the audience’s impatience to offer opinions and/or ask questions (Q and A’s generally consist of awkward inquiries, uncomfortable verbal displays and reluctant half-raised hands- rarely are they as impassioned as this one was).
The House I Live In is a powerful examination of America’s costly (more than a trillion dollars), futile “War on Drugs” (40 years, 45 million arrests, making America the world's largest jailer). Jarecki says early in the film that his catalyst/muse for this project was a not-so elderly (quite spry in the film) African American woman that pretty much raised him while his parents were working. She’s a charming, soulful lady with the wisdom of the world haunting her aura. Nannie Jeter’s warm simplicity provides the perfect warm center for Jarecki's documentary to orbit. Around this core- spinning off from it- the filmmaker weaves a well researched dissection of frustrated political agendas, shamed and compromised bloodlines, interviews with jailers and the jailed, footage of wealthy men making inhumane decisions, and credible, articulate speakers offering opinions as to the “Whys” and the “Hows” of drug-related incarceration issues.
We quickly learn this laughable enterprise (even the phrase- "The War on Drugs" has a ring of absurdity) costs lives, destroys countless families, and racially cleanses American society of its carefully chosen enemies. Drugs are cheaper, more pure, and more available today than ever before. The film credits 37th president, Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, with the genesis of the charade (Nixon supposedly 1st coined the phrase in the media, “War on Drugs”- the Reagans drove it home with a vengeance in the 80’s). The film quite strategically shows us that nothing has changed since. The streets no safer- the drugs still prevalent- the money (tax dollars) still squandered with reckless abandon.
Just a couple of the very important questions addressed in the film; 1. Why have we somehow molded a society that requires/needs drugs? 2. What is this peculiar pattern that keeps emerging throughout history where an enemy is identified- then discredited, stripped of all rights- and slowly eradicated (severely marginalized) from the the United States landscape (minorities, lower class citizens, the poor, any ethnic group that threatens rich whites). The film rightly compares this "War" on drugs to a holocaust. It certainly is. The numbers and the execution are identical to the logistics of holocaust. And the "War" is not waged on drugs- per se- it's waged daily on poor minorities.
The House I Live In deservedly won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance (documentary). It’s an extremely effective work that demands exposure to as many eyes and brains as humanly possible. Movies don’t often incite groundbreaking provocations (Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) comes to mind- as it was shown to Congress leading to the Assassinations Disclosure Act; Erroll Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1988) led to an overturned capital murder verdict and a man’s prison release). Jarecki’s The House I Live In has this kind of voltage. It asks the right questions about the right problems. The film gets under your skin compelling you to recognize the difficult fact that the higher powers of this nation are committing more unspeakable crimes than the drug pushers they jail. And it is all to pad their glutted wallets, assure their societal positions, demonstrate their unavailing influence, justify inflated budgets and ameliorate their infantile Anglo fears.
Eugene Jarecki’s other documentaries include 2002's The Trials of Henry Kissinger, 2005’s Why We Fight and 2011’s Reagan.