Conviction walks the well-worn path of “underprivileged youth cum adult done good,” but does it better than most. From a distance, this Hilary Swank an Sam Rockwell joint directed by Tony Goldwyn might look a bit like The Blind Side, imagining a lone woman standing up for injustice – and in a sense, it is, but the film creates its own niche by skipping over the meaty parts of a sob story, choosing to focus more on the hunt for exoneration.
Rockwell plays the criminal-in-question, Kenny Waters, a perpetual delinquent in Ayer, Massachusetts. Seemingly, from the time he could walk, Kenny would break into other people’s homes with the assistance of his younger sister Betty Ann (eventually, Swank). In typical fashion, the screenplay makes this more venial than malicious: the two are often found on comfortable beds, munching on candy, and staring at the ceiling as a way to find some sort of normalcy in their lives by pretending to be someone else who lives somewhere else. Some of these moments are cloying, and their mother, who has “nine children by seven different fathers,” is particularly vilified and oblivious to the plight that she kindled for her children, but all in all, the interaction between Rockwell and Swank detracts from most of the cartoonishness.
As an actor, Rockwell is steady and underrated. Even in Kenny’s most chaotic moments, Rockwell performs with an intense subtlety when others might regress to guttural screams and exaggerated gestures. There’s something to be said for an actor who can make a reprobate genuinely charming. And, this is one reason to keep watching through to the predetermined end – both historically and narratively.
Another reason is Swank. At thirty-six, she’s already won two Best Actress Oscars, and precedent dictates that there aren’t many more to come. Only one woman has won four, and until Meryl Streep wins her third, two is the max, so Swank seems to have little left to prove, and this seems to have gone against her in the last few years. There have been a few films that looked promising but ultimately fizzled: Amelia, The Black Dahlia, and Freedom Writers, but these are renditions of renditions that could hardly be carried by a single actress – even if she held her own in each. But, much like Rockwell, Swank’s performances come replete with earnest subtlety and don’t beg the audience to remember a previous role like Brandon Teena or Maggie Fitzgerald. Both earned her statuettes, but I saw neither in Betty Ann.
While these two actors carry the film, another strength – whether it stems from writer Pamela Gray or director Tony Goldwyn, I’m uncertain – is what the film omits: the unnecessary drama. Admittedly, some exists to shape the characters: Kenny flies off the handle when someone insults his baby daughter, thus prompting Betty to acknowledge that Kenny’s “such a good dad” before he puts his daughter down and knocks out the slanderous man. There’s contrived silliness here to show his paternal tenderness juxtaposed with his penchant for violence, but the scene ends quickly enough to move to another flashback, flashforward, or flash-further-back.
However, Conviction also alludes to conflicts and then elides the visual proof, which benefits the pace of the narration. Take for example Betty, whose determination to go to law school involves her getting a GED, a BA, getting accepted to law school, passing the bar, and bartending full time to make ends meet, all while holding together a marriage and raising two sons. The steps are exposited during a visit with her brother, but we aren’t aware of when she takes these tests, there are no montages that depict Betty Ann frantically flipping through study-guide tomes, brewing coffee, or nervously chewing her pencil as the proctor walks up and down aisles in a sterile room. Instead, we see her in a class and assume she was accepted; a letter comes to inform her she’s passed the bar; brief frustration flares between her and her husband and then she picks the children up from a home that is not her own, signaling an eventual divorce. Some might suggest that such lapidary narration stymies character development, but truthfully, these moments are such perfunctory ingredients that the audience sees them coming a mile away, so Conviction’s glossing over the visual evidence of these moments keeps the focus on the goal to exonerate Kenneth.
Something else that differentiates this film from others of its ilk is the underlying theme of “life as currency.” In one sense, Kenny’s conviction atones for a death, and since he’s less than the epitome of an upstanding citizen, society doesn’t lose much in his incarceration. Such issues have been addressed in other films and by Foucault in both Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization, but the time period in which Conviction takes place throws a wrench into the gears of the legal system.
In 1986, DNA was used in a criminal investigation for the first time in a case involving the murder of two 15-year-old girls outside Leicester, England. In 1987 Robert Melias became the first person convicted of a crime based on DNA evidence.
The emergence of these tests – something that we now take for granted on account of CSI and its numerous copycats and progeny – plays a crucial role in Conviction inasmuch as it’s the key to exoneration, but also highlights the nefarious way that the “lives of others” factor into personal advancement. Take for instance the initial arrest and prosecution of Kenny Waters, who is ultimately found guilty of first-degree murder because of fraudulent testimony. The currency exchange of life here is three fold: two witnesses testify to hearing Waters confess to the murder during fits of rage. However, both witnesses are coerced, and their livelihoods (children in both cases and the possibility of being charged as accessories) are threatened unless they help take this murderer off the streets. In this case, Kenny’s life is a fungible good for each witnesses’ freedom that has been tainted by their respective associations with him.
Ironically, both witnesses’ lives – and Waters’ – also become currency for Nancy Taylor, the officer who initially arrested Waters for murder. As the only woman on the Ayers police force in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Taylor acknowledges feeling constant pressure to prove herself, something that drives her to secure a conviction to save face and add clout to her resume.
The same resume building tactic can be seen in Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General who initially refused to commute Waters’ sentence and vacate the conviction despite DNA evidence excluding him as a suspect in the murder. The exoneration ultimately comes when one of the previous witnesses risks perjuring herself and signs and affidavit that recants her previous testimony, but the ultimate push comes when the case is gilded by the presence of the Boston Globe and New York Times, publications that can beatify the benevolence of an Attorney General and render Waters’ life a much more valuable currency for re-election.
