Sing Sing

★★★★½

It can become surprisingly easy to forget the value of art in the face of great injustice and suffering. But if Greg Kwedar’s warmly affecting drama “Sing Sing” is good for one thing, it is how it reminds us of the necessity for art, the nourishment it provides. The power it has in every individual life. To live is to feel, and to feel is to express and create. We are all of us artists, regardless of our circumstances.

For Divine G (Colman Domingo), his circumstance is that he is an inmate at the infamous Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Through the prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, Divine G and several of his fellow prisoners, including the unruly Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin (as himself), find solace and liberation in staging an original theatrical production.

Kwedar’s film may paint in broad strokes we’re all familiar with, but this isn’t like any prison movie you’ve ever seen. A textured, empathetic portrait of incarcerated life, “Sing Sing” actively avoids many of the traps and pitfalls of the genre to deliver something truly moving and heartfelt. A lesser film may have walked the road more travelled, leaning into the melodramatic and amplifying the conflict between the soft-spoken Divine G and the program’s reluctant newcomer. Instead, Kwedar embraces the inmates and their circumstances as deeply human stories just as worthy of compassionate representation as any other. 

Its loose, airy approach allows scenes to play out as naturalist vignettes. At times it feels as though the crew were simply lucky to catch a particular moment on camera, as the flow and rhythm of each scene exudes a casual spontaneity that makes this world and its characters feel all the more lived in. For a film specifically about the art of performance, this is especially fitting.

So much of the heartwarming appeal of “Sing Sing” derives from the sense of play and abandon in the prisoners' pursuit of artistic liberation. Their acting games and warm-ups and creative brainstorming sessions are just purely delightful to sit in on, both for their emotional satisfaction as well as how effortlessly funny they are. Burly, tough-guy personas playing make-believe with cardboard weapons and flamboyant costumes manages to be both as funny as it sounds, and deeply, profoundly touching. This is more than just a distraction from prison life. “We’re here to become human again,” one performer says.

At the centre of it all, Colman Domingo is an absolute revelation. In one of my favourite performances of the year, Domingo is heartbreaking and vulnerable, but also endearingly warm and funny. He takes on enormous complexities and nuances in each moment, imbuing every beat with layers and depth. Divine G is realized so fully, so entirely. He commands every frame he’s in, delivering an arresting monument to the power of performance within a film precisely about the worth of the performing arts.

But perhaps more notable is the impressive talents of Domingo’s co-stars, the unexpected collection of inmates-turned-actors that populate the prison’s theatre program. They are more than just set-dressing. Like Clarence Maclin as a fictionalized version of himself, the theatre troupe is composed entirely of real-life former prisoners playing themselves in the film. The authenticity this lends to the film is indescribable. Maclin himself is astounding in a breakthrough performance that balances tones wonderfully, while the other inmates feel just as lived-in and genuine. Their sincerity and honesty bleeds into the rest of the film.

“Sing Sing” sings. It’s a reminder of why art matters, why theatre and the performing arts holds value, and why films like it are so important. A famous quote from fantasy author George R. R. Martin kept rattling in my brain throughout the film: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. A man who never reads lives only one.” The same, I think, can be applied to film and theatre. Just as the inmates of Sing Sing Correctional Facility seek liberation and escapism through the many lives they portray on stage, Greg Kwedar’s film allows us to live their lives for a short time, too. To step into the shoes of characters whose stories are too often reduced and flattened. We are all of us artists, in the end. All that differentiates us is circumstance.