Behind the national headlines is the tale of a man’s remarkable perseverance and the incredible circumstances that led to his conviction and eventual release.
In "Lovely jackson," Rickey Jackson returns to the prison he was condemned to more than 45 years ago, the Mansfield Reformatory. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- What if you spent 39 years locked up for a murder you didn’t commit? How would you survive the brutal and hopeless day-to-day of prison life? What kind of person would you be when you came out on the other side? Rickey Jackson knows the answers to those questions. He lived it.
The intent is to journey into Jackson’s memory. By putting him back in his prison jumpsuit or having him improvise dialogue with the younger version of himself, Waldeck hopes to tap into the psychology and emotion of his subject and elicit an authentic response as he relives his ordeal. Filmed mostly in black and white, the result is a surreal quality that captures the audience’s attention at a level that perhaps a conventional documentary might not.
The film begins in May 1975 with the fatal shooting and robbery of money order salesman Harold Franks outside a corner store. The neighborhood paperboy, 12-year-old Edward Vernon, is bribed by the husband of the other shooting victim to go to the police. A detective coerces him into providing a name to pin the crime on: Rickey Jackson.
Reenactments in documentaries can be treacherous territory. Not done right, they often come across as cheesy or overly dramatic like an old episode of “Unsolved Mysteries.” But the participation by Jackson and Vernon, his accuser, in those scenes gives the film an unexpected rawness. It’s powerful when Jackson hovers over Vernon’s hospital bed when a pastor tries to convince the former paperboy, now nearing 60, to recant his testimony from so many years ago.
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