Another JonBenét Ramsey movie?
The latest attempt is maybe what we really need, writes Stephanie Merry
Last fall’s glut of 20th-anniversary television specials on the unsolved murder of JonBenét Ramsey felt like a race to the bottom: Which program would most grotesquely exploit the 1996 killing of a six-year-old girl? From the title alone, the new Netflix documentary Casting JonBenét sounds like the last thing we need.
In fact, it might be just what we need to move past a case that’s generated so much speculation.
Australian filmmaker Kitty Green travelled to Ramsey’s hometown, Boulder, Col., not to re-investigate the crime but to get a sense of how residents felt about it. To do that, she posted a casting call for local actors to play the central figures in the case.
While the documentary includes some dramatizations, the movie consists mostly of interviews with the actors, who discuss the murder and who they think was responsible while also sharing personal details. The interviews are revealing. One woman, trying out for the part of JonBenét’s mother Patsy, is herself a mother approaching 40, so she’s offended at the theory Patsy might have lost her mind simply because she had a big birthday looming. For a different actress, that theory’s a no-brainer.
Casting JonBenét isn’t a documentary about a murder, but about how people come to wildly different conclusions based on the same information. It’s also about how easily we judge other people and how our present views are shaped by our pasts.
Occasionally, the movie reenacts historical events. Shot with a grey-blue palette, these scenes are more austere and feature very little dialogue. During these moments, the tragedy comes into focus.
The interviews with actors, by contrast, can be amusing. One performer, who moonlights as a sex educator, gives a tutorial on how to use different types of whips. A professional Santa Claus says Patsy was probably “a royal b---- of a mother.”
Just when the interviews grow tiresome, there’s a shift in the film. Question-and-answer sessions are shot with the same grave palette of the re-enactments, and the stories become more tragic. One man, auditioning for the part of JonBenét’s father, reveals his recent cancer diagnosis; another talks about the ethics of working on this project.
The final moments of the movie are a gorgeously choreographed scene involving many of the actors we’ve grown to know. The participants act out the many different theories (though not the actual murder, thankfully). Watching so much agony on a set made to look like the Ramsey home, we’re reminded of the very real tragedy at the heart of a story reduced to tabloid fodder.
Casting JonBenét doesn’t get us any closer to the truth. But it might get at something more profound: The idea we should just acknowledge what this is — an awful, heartbreaking mystery — and move on.