‘Time’ captures life in the shadow of a prison sentence
A memoir preserved over the years on digital video recorders, a newly filmed meditation on the mysterious ebb and flow of our lives, a proposition for the release of incarcerated men and women of color, “Time” is also a selfportrait of Sibil Fox Richardson aka Fox Rich, who was incarcerated along with her husband Rob after they robbed a bank in Shreveport, La., in 1997. She was released after serving 3½ years of a 12year sentence. He was sentenced to 60 years without parole or suspension of sentence. She has dedicated her life to getting him out of prison and raising their children with the help of her friends, family and community.
A Sundance award winner for director Garrett Bradley in the documentary category, “Time” is perhaps even more of an editing-room achievement. Incorporating material filmed over the course of almost two decades, charting the growth of Rich’s six sons, but mostly focusing on twins Freedom and Justus, the film is an intimate, black-and-white, found-footage glimpse of a family and its matriarch on a mission to retrieve Rob from the clutches of Hades himself in the baleful form of the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
It will not be easy or cheap or quickly achieved. To the tune of old time-y piano accompaniment by Ethiopian nun-musician Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, Rich, a New Orleans used car dealer and motivational speaker, is depicted before us in a mutable portrait spanning two decades, beginning with a more youthful Fox pregnant with her twin sons. How this woman made it possible for her and her children, not only to survive, but to thrive under these conditions would be a miracle, if so many other mothers had not done the same before her.
The film unfolds in digital slivers of time and images, sometimes in the square shape of a cellphone camera. We meet Fox, her strong, but not invulnerable mother-in-law, her remarkably healthy and well-adjusted sons, Fox’s fellow parishioners and even a Louisiana voodoo woman. “It’s almost like slavery,” Rob’s mother says, describing his prison sentence and how black men and women have their lives taken away by such excessive punishments.
“Time” will flash forward to the grown-up twins, and then flash back to their infancy. “Time is lost,” a grown-up Justus says, “A very long time.” In only one of the film’s moving scenes, Fox begs forgiveness from her fellow parishioners. In the space of a few seconds, Fox will show us a face of infinite patience and a countenance of bitter rage. She is this film’s immovable goddess.
Her older son Richard is brilliant in a school debate. Another son receives a lab coat at graduation. On the phone from prison, Rob reflects on trees he saw planted there 20 years before. “Success is the best revenge,” Fox angrily avers.
“Time” turns the most modest video snapshots from the past into art.
How this woman made it possible for her and her children, not only to survive, but to thrive under these conditions would be a miracle, if so many other mothers had not done the same before her.