Film Leaving Neverland; The Aftermath
Michael Jackson was one of the most photographed celebrities who ever lived. But in “Leaving Neverland,” a devastating fourhour documentary that portrays him as a serial predator, there are photographs of Jackson that have a quality unlike anything you’ve ever seen. They are homespun, casually candid, sitting-around-theliving-room shots, most of them snapped during the visits that Jackson paid to the modest boyhood homes of the two men the movie is about: Wade Robson and James Safechuck, both now in their late 30s, each of whom describes, with disarming eloquence and self-possession, how Jackson befriended them when they were children and then, for years (starting when they were 7 and 11 years old, respectively), sexually abused them. The film suggests that they were far from the only victims.
In “Leaving Neverland,” the testimony of Robson and Safechuck is overwhelmingly powerful and convincing. And one reason it’s more powerful than anything we’ve previously encountered on the subject — though plenty has been reported about it, beginning with an in- depth Vanity Fair article in 1994 — is that the two don’t just describe the sexual activities they say Jackson subjected them to (oral sex, mutual masturbation, the viewing of pornography). They describe, in abundantly articulate and deeply emotional detail, how abuse took place within the context of what appeared (to them) to be a relationship of hypnotic warmth and trust.
Jackson became the kids’“pal,” and he befriended their families too. The photos catch him sitting around with them, looking surprisingly not “on,” with a relaxed, letting-his-hair- down vibe we’re unused to seeing. Of course, he was still the biggest celebrity on the planet, a reality he used in the most manipulative way possible. The phrase that keeps coming up in the movie is “larger-than-life.” He truly was. And that’s part of what’s gripping and dismaying about “Leaving Neverland.” The filmmaker, Dan Reed, forces us to confront the idea that the greatest pop genius since the Beatles was, beneath his talent, a monster. “Leaving Neverland” is a kind of truelife horror movie. Some will walk out of it shaken, others, on some level, liberated by the extent of its claims.
Jackson, no surprise, met the two boys through show business. Wade Robson grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and during Jackson’s 1987 concerts there, a dance contest was held for children, the winner of whom would get to meet Jackson. Robson, who was 5 at the time, was officially too young to enter the contest, but they let him perform anyway; he did the Scissory moves from the “Bad” video wearing a pint-size buckled-black-leather outfit, and he was an instant hit. (As a kid, Robson already showed a hint of the talent that would lead him, as an adult, to make a name for himself as the choreographer for ’N Sync