Twelve years in prison What is the first thing a man will do when he has served thirteen years in prison for robbery and is finally free? Will he visit his family, if he has one, open a job section in the newspaper to find out what his chances are of starting a new life through the acquisition of financial stability, quench his thirst for years of abstinence with alcohol in a bar, or remove a prostitute to satisfy another kind of hunger? It is not known how forty-year-old Christopher Miller, who robbed a shoe store in New Jersey at the age of twenty-seven, spent his first day at liberty, but what he did in the second made room for his name in the pages of local newspapers, who could not pass up the opportunity to tell the story of a man who robbed the same establishment twenty-four hours after his release from prison. This seemingly incredible story, which looks so comical that it could become a plot of an anecdote, in fact is nothing surprising and can surprise only a person unfamiliar with the features of the modern American judicial system, in which a life sentence can be obtained even for robbery, and in which there are practically no opportunities for rehabilitation of a person after serving a long prison term, and helping him to re-acquire himself in society, which leads to a recidivism rate of seventy percent and above, meaning that more than half of those released soon return to prison, and this time for good. No wonder, then, that for many inmates the fear of release transcends all the violence, isolation, betrayal, loneliness, and paranoia they experience beyond the bars. The second feature-length film directed by Chad Hartigan “This is Martin Bonner” gives the viewer a veil over what happens in the soul of a person in the first days after leaving prison, exploring not only this specific problem, but also in general the difficulties that any of us experience, mastering life in a new place.
The experience that a prisoner experiences, both inside and outside the prison, at the exit, is unique, but at the same time, as in any unique experience, this situation can always find an equivalent in a “normal” life, more familiar to the average viewer – for sure, you have ever said that you feel like a prison, so there must be a story that could be a guide for the viewer according to the emotions of a person, after twelve years of life according to one strict routine, suddenly forced to settle in a completely new world, in a completely new quality and in a completely new city. In the film, such a story was a character who gave the picture not only the name, but also the idea itself, since the director was prompted not by worries about recidivism and prisoners, but by an unexpected turn in the fate of his father, who in old age was forced to move to another city and change his job, which he gave for many years, to the position of curator in a Christian rehabilitation program for prisoners. This idea satisfied Hartigan’s passion for experiments and he challenged himself to talk about the feelings of people much older than him, in whose shoes he had not yet visited, and the film itself can be called an experiment with an approach to the topic – “This is Martin Bonner” showed the first in many years a textured image of a prisoner, much less depressed, aggressive, violent and hopeless than we usually see in a kind of subgenre in which people on the other side of the grid are used as meat for paintings of an entertainment genre group, and against the background of the calm ordinary life of Martin Bonner, his timidiousness and desire to re-touch among people, with a desire to find self-feeling among people, and a desire to find a sense of self-reactivity.
Two strong characters who are simultaneously faced with the same problem as Martin and Travis were forced at an old age to rebuild their lives, not being able to rely on someone’s reliable and long-tested shoulder, or seek advice from someone who has already experienced it, will always decorate the film, but two strong themes intersecting in one work this issue is already more complex and not every director manages to catch both rabbits he chases. Chad Hartigan's film raises many serious themes, from the disinterest of prisoners and workers in rehabilitation programs, and the almost complete uselessness of the latter, which is a rather narrow view of things, to questions of old age, family disunity, faith and religion. All these and many other aspects of the theme of rethinking life in adulthood are trying to embody the main characters of the picture, but while we are torn between a huge number of serious thoughts and questions, it steals time from the characters, because they, reflecting the thoughts of the director, who are often not so accurately and categorically connected with each other, as one would like, are deprived of something personal, and being torn between two characters whose experience is certainly similar, but at the same time has many fundamental differences, we get not a film about the futility of Christian initiatives, who do not get acquainted with the real situation and try to help the film on one scale, but do not succeed in this one thing at a long time, but do not succeed in the film, and do not succeed in all, and do not succeed in one way, but in one way, but in one way, but in one way, and that the film, and that the whole person is not succeed in one way, and is not succeeding in one way, but is not only in one way, but is not to be disappointed in one way.