Prison call There are many questions that can not be answered without thinking. How do you make a plane equation? Which city is the capital of Bangladesh? What is the chemical amount of ozone? 5.04×1023 oxygen atoms? But there are also many questions connected not with complex sciences or geography, but with real life, the knowledge of the answer to which everyone is in a hurry to please, but in very rare cases people really show knowledge, at least somewhat close to the present state of affairs. For example, what are inmates doing in a maximum security prison somewhere in California? Afraid to drop soap in the shower, invent new ways to make cold weapons, arrange intrigues, the scope of which will envy any soap opera, lie on the state bed and half a day study the pattern on the state ceiling and fall in love with local nurses or guards? Maybe so, but most of these things happen in a completely different setting, and elicit very different emotions in people imprisoned behind dozens of bars in a system in which seven to life means life, and twenty-five to life means life, torn apart by guilt, disillusionment with themselves and the world, and the lack of any prospect or possibility of correction. And certainly few people imagine that when you watch the new episode of your favorite American television product “Breaking Bad”, at the same time it is watched by hundreds of prisoners in dozens of states, and the song you like to listen to on the way to work, yesterday could sound in the headphones of a convicted murderer who turned on the radio. But this kind of coincidence is just the tip of the iceberg, and behind it lies the same feelings and the same story that, for whatever reason, ended in a much worse place than yours. “We are you,” says one of the characters in Michael Wenzer’s documentary “I Fly at Night,” which attempts to debunk some of the stereotypes about how prison looks and lives from the inside, and almost all the clichés about what goes on in the minds of people who once made the biggest mistake a human being can make.
In almost any prison movie or TV series, you will see the same picture – a perfectly sterile camera that is the twin of all the other cells of the block, not only in that it was built on the same principle, but also in content that is usually completely absent, so that nothing hints that once these killers were people with their hobbies and plans for the future, and even though most of this was lost under the weight of the crime committed, their life is still going on, their heart is still beating, and therefore the search for new meanings and goals that can be closely intertwined with life and so be a completely new acquisition. “I Fly at Night” shows what the cameras of American prisoners really look like, many of which from some angles you would not distinguish from the room of a person who has never committed anything criminal in his life, and that these are not gray concrete boxes in which a toothbrush with a blade melted into it hides under faded bed linen, these are small dwellings full of books read to holes, musical instruments, typewriters and photos of loved ones who were once at arm’s length, and now either gone or give their love in a limited room. Prisoners, who are usually forced to remain silent and hide all their feelings, turned out to be very frank with the director, cloaking their pain in poems, music and just long monologues, the power of which can be envied by many successful writers, and despite the fact that all the characters of the film have a completely different story and opinion about what they did and what their life should be now, in one thing they still agree – the most terrible is not the opportunity to get sharpened in the stomach, but what leads to it. The isolation, the hatred, the knowledge that to the people on the outside they are just the heroes of another popular melodramatic series about the prison, and to the prison staff no more than numbers, and that there is no help for the correctional system to live up to its name and really change anything.
At Night I Fly explains two paradoxes of modern American prison life. The first, which can be applied to any country in the world at all, is that many criminals will never be caught - mothers who gave their love to anyone but their children, fathers who put out cigarettes for their sons, and one day simply disappeared and never returned, stepfathers for whom non-native offspring were merely pendants, necessary only when they are overwhelmed by a rage that cannot be expressed in words. The second, more specific to the specific system, about which the director tells, perfectly voiced by the main character of the film - people go to prison thinking that they knew everything, but the years of isolation, contributing to the thought process even for the stupidest specimens, help to understand that all their ideas about life were false, everything that was important was not so important in their new life, and everything that helped them in life outside turned out to be just a dangerous illusion that everyone can consider real. But when people understand this, they have no opportunity to start a new life, only an atmosphere in which they can only commit new crimes. An insidious killer is caught, convicted, given life without parole, justice is done, newspapers are jubilant, people can sleep peacefully, and that's it, end of story? Michael Wenzer's film shows that this is just the beginning, that there is always not only black and white, but also a thousand shades of gray. The director, who first met the main character of his upcoming film in 2000 and made a short journey from Sweden to help him share his point of view, dedicated his picture to a certain person. And this review is dedicated to all people who like to speculate with the appearance of experienced people about sexual violence in male prisons, all right, do not look deeper, because you can find something that hurts much more than a razor blade.