Guilt is an emotion that often feels inescapable. We may wish
that our past actions had been different, but opportunities to
assuage those feelings can seem hopelessly out of reach in the
present.
With his new documentary, “Stevie,” opening Friday,
director Steve James tackles his own demons head-on and discovers
that despite his best efforts, he may never be able to make up for
the past.
In the early 1980’s, Steve James, director of the
critically acclaimed documentary “Hoop Dreams,” served
as a Big Brother to 11-year-old Stevie Fielding in rural Illinois.
Abandoned by his mother at an early age, Fielding had been in and
out of foster homes and special schools for children with
behavioral problems. James was relieved after moving to Chicago in
1985 because he no longer had the responsibility of looking after
such a troubled kid.
Ten years later, wrestling with the guilt of having disappeared
from Fielding’s life, James reconnected with him and
persuaded Fielding to be the subject of a documentary film. It was
to be a film that James hoped would help him understand Fielding
better, and just might let James off the hook for having abandoned
Fielding.
James had hoped to make a simple character study of a troubled
man who has yet to escape the ghosts of his childhood. But when
Fielding was arrested in 1997 for allegedly molesting a young girl,
James found that he could no longer be an objective observer.
Emotions ran high as the stakes had suddenly and alarmingly become
all too serious.
“At a certain point it just seemed very clear that if I
was going to make the film, it had to include me,” James
said. “When this crime happened and he was charged, I really
found myself being drawn into it, forget the film. I think it does
give the audience ammunition to have all kinds of conflicting
feelings about me, but that was a risk that I think was important
to take.”
Although the film is ostensibly about Fielding and the
disturbing turn of events surrounding his arrest, it also follows
the lives of Fielding’s family members. By weaving together
the stories of Fielding’s mother, sister and girlfriend along
with Fielding’s own, James creates a compelling patchwork of
the pain and heartbreaking hope that pervade each of their lives.
To know Fielding is to worry about him.
“Stevie is a very troubling person, and looked at one way
he’s a monster, and looked at another way he’s a child
that was doomed to this,” James said.
One of the things that this film does is shatter some of the
stereotypes many people have about poor, rural white Americans.
Despite Fielding’s behavior, James is able to depict a
compassionate family that acts nothing like what we have come to
expect based on programs like “Jerry Springer.”
“No matter what class you’re from, or what your
background is, families have everything to do with who we are, and
who we become. It’s rare to find a family that gives up on
each other. They keep trying in some way, and this family does.
Even this family is still trying,” James said.
The only person who appears in the film who has yet to see it is
Fielding himself. James has made repeated efforts to arrange for
Fielding to see it, but has encountered difficulty because Fielding
is currently in prison. Officials have rejected James’
requests on the grounds that it would be a special privilege.
“Because he has not been a model prisoner, it would be
hard to beg a special case here. If he were a model prisoner I
think we’d have a better shot at it,” James said.