Is it a “spoiler” to reveal that a movie has a happy ending? That is, after an hour and a half of watching suffering, struggle and trauma, it all turns out okay, or reasonably okay; in the case of Conviction, the viewer’s hour and a half represents about 18 years on the part of the characters, but it feels long enough.
Then again, the happy-ending spoiler is embedded in the very concept of the movie. When you see that something is “based on a true story” and you find that it’s about a woman’s struggle to free her brother from an unjust prison sentence, you can be fairly sure that there will be a long period of earnest ups and downs but that, finally, the forces of good (that is, the sister) will triumph before the credits roll.
Otherwise, why make the movie? What’s in it for the viewer if all the movie contains is 18 years of struggle and no triumph in the end? Nobody makes movies like that, or at least not in the United States — unless, perhaps, it’s a very low-budget indie pic made by a deeply depressive writer-director. Not that I’ve seen or even heard of one of those. Certainly, I can’t imagine that anyone wants to watch a movie that’s all trauma and no triumph in the end, especially if it’s “based on a true story”.
So, as soon as you know what Conviction is about, you can expect what in fact transpires. Which means that you’re really sitting through all that trauma just waiting, waiting for the moment of triumph. It’s hard to engage with the trauma because you know it will all be wiped away, eventually, in a moment of resolution.
Conviction is not a bad movie. It may even be a good movie. But I couldn’t say I enjoyed it or could in good conscience actually recommend to anyone that they see it.
Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell do good acting work as the central brother-sister pair, Betty Ann and Kenny Waters, and Minnie Driver gives excellent support as Betty Ann’s friend and fellow student who supports her through her ordeal — and occasionally tells her uncomfortable truths when she needs telling. In fact, Driver is the best thing in the movie: she has some spark, some light about her, as well as a wry awareness. We see far too little of her in our cinemas.
Well put together
The film is competently put together, without any fancy flourishes; that would have distracted from its down-home air of ordinary realism, its insistent reminders that this is a true story, and its focus on Betty Ann and her determination, against all the odds, to free Kenny.
After he is convicted of a brutal murder and jailed for life, she takes a job as a bartender by night so she can go to law school by day and thus qualify to help prove her brother’s innocence. (The pun in the movie’s title obviously refers both to Kenny’s incarceration and Betty Ann’s determination.)
In the course of this, she loses a husband and causes some ructions with her two sons: she does that classic bad-parent thing, as usually presented in American movies and TV shows — she has to renege on a promise to take them fishing.
Amid this storyline, there are many flashbacks to Betty Ann and Kenny’s childhood, showing their mother’s lack of care and their compensatory closeness to each other. One scene, in which the children are separated to go to different foster homes, is strikingly painful to watch. But that’s just a sharper, more intense moment of pain in a movie that is mostly about Betty Ann taking the pain for 17 or 18 years so she can free Kenny — a long, dull ache, say, rather than a sharp stab of agony.
Presumably we’re meant to sympathise with her and to feel immense relief when, ultimately, she triumphs, though the moment of triumph comes about through chance more than her new lawyerly skills.
In the case of this real-life story, that’s simply what happened; funny how they don’t make movies “based on a true story” in which no amount of determination, let alone a lucky break, makes all the difference. And, in the case of this story, there are things we are not told: that Kenny was an alcoholic and that he died pointlessly six months after he finally walked out of jail. We are told how Betty Ann now works with an organisation dealing with miscarriages of justice, so that’s great, but how did she feel when her brother died so soon after his release?
You see, real life has to be edited if it’s to provide the happy endings and the good feelings we so deeply desire. Some of it has to be left out of the storytelling or the shape of the thing will fail to conform to viewers’ expectations. Hence, “based on a true story” is a bit of a canard; the “based” is the important part, not the “true story”.
Yes, we want some realism in the movies, or in some movies, if we are to feel they say something about real life and not just about imaginary worlds filled with clear-cut heroes and villains. We want those too, but we know that’s just “entertainment”. It seems to be thought healthy for viewers to see a “true story”, to confront reality itself. And yet, at the same time, as Conviction makes clear, we dare not let go of the fantasy that makes everything seem okay in the end. Spoilers, indeed.