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Stevie is the new highly provocative and troubling documentary film by director Steve James (Hoop Dreams). From 1983-1985 Steve James, while going to college, was a "Big Brother" mentor to Stevie Fielding, and although he said he would stay in touch with Stevie he failed do so until 1995. In 1995, ten years after he stopped mentoring Stevie, James returns (with camera) to check up on the troubled little boy, and over the next four years of renewed contact came the film Stevie.
During the 1995 section of the film we are introduced to Stevie and some of his family, and we begin to see how troubled little boy became an even more troubled man. Stevie was an unwanted child, he doesn't know who his real father is, after his mother married she gave Stevie to her parents-in-law because she didn't want to deal with him, Stevie was abused both physically and emotionally, soon Stevie was taken away from his grandparents (who couldn't adopt him because they were too old) and wound up going through every foster care facility in southern Illinois as well as a mental hospital, and in one of those foster care centers Stevie was raped. It's a highly disturbing, heart wrenching story, and from there it only gets worse. Now that Stevie is in his twenties he is still living with his grandmother, has a violent temperament, abuses drugs, and has been arrested for all types of crimes like robbery, drug use, etc. After the filming in 1995 Steve James doesn't go back to see Stevie again until two years later.
In 1997 when James returns to see Stevie a new horrifying developement has occured. Stevie has molested his 8 year old cousin (an act predicted by a psychologist when Stevie was younger), and his trial is pending. The filming continues for the next two years until Stevie's sentencing, and the account of Stevie's childhood and his current life and situation are more fleshed out.
Stevie is an emotionally draining portrait of a man who is both a victim and a victimizer, and it is almost guaranteed to shatter any conception that criminals are nothing but monsters. The complexity of Stevie is hard to deal with; on one hand we certainly sympathize for all the torture he has suffered, and on the other hand we cannot and should not excuse his behavior. Forcing us to face what we would rather turn away from makes this a powerful movie, and a very uncomfortable one as well.
The film's biggest drawback, however, is how expoitative it feels. There is no denying the fact that James is exploiting Stevie, and he even grapples over this in the film. It's a very fine line that is walked, and for the most part James does try to be balanced and honest in his portrayal of Stevie. Still, the over riding feeling that Stevie is, in some way, being objectified, once again, is troublesome and only causes the film to be that much harder to face. The fact that James doesn't earnestly begin to film Stevie until after he has molested the little girl is testament to the exploitative nature of the film, and it's obvious that Stevie is only letting James film him because Stevie is yearning to rekindle the "big brother" relationship they once had, and thinks it's the best way to keep James around.
***1/2 of ****
