In ‘Time,’ love and a family waylaid by incarceration
For the 21 years while Sibil “Fox” Richardson’s husband, Rob, was imprisoned, they were, she says, “a telephone, letter-writing, visitation, just-stay-alive and keep-your-head-above-water couple.”
How long is 21 years plus four days? Garrett Bradley’s acclaimed documentary about the Richardson family, “Time,” measures its passage through a father’s absence. It’s seen in children growing up, graduations coming and going, faces changing with age. Made with family video diaries shot by Fox of herself and their six children that span more than two decades, “Time” lends a powerfully intimate portrait of the toll of mass incarceration.
Many films have sought to capture the impact of America’s prison industrial complex, but “Time” is something else. The film, which Amazon will release in select theaters Friday and launch on Amazon Prime next week, is a lyrical, black-and-white montage that digs into the long-term ache of incarceration. In footage that unspools more circularly than chronologically, toddlers turn into young men and then back again.
It’s also about an enduring love. Throughout the two decades, Fox remains steadfastly devoted to her husband. She becomes a social rights advocate and works tirelessly to get him freed from the Louisiana State Penitentiary where he’s serving a 60-year sentence for robbing a bank.
Rob and Fox were high-school sweethearts. They married, bought a house and planned to start a business. But when their plans for a hip-hop clothing store fell through in 1997, they held up a branch of the Shreveport Credit Union. The scheme was poorly thought out; they didn’t steal any money and no one got hurt. But their sentences were harsh. Fox, the getaway driver, got 19 years. Rob got 60 years.
“It was hard to even admit out of pride and out of guilt that our actions had led us to such a lowly place,” says Fox. “We’re good people. And sometimes good people do the darnedest dog-gone things.”
“Time” resurrected a lot of what they — and Rob, in particular — are also trying to get past. Watching and talking about the film, he says, has been both therapy and torture.