Clemency

Dear Mark,

The far-reaching trauma of incarceration is explored in the piercingly powerful film Clemency. The drama follows prison warden Bernadine Williams in her devotion in furnishing inmates with dignity as they face their fate, a fate which often includes execution. The weight of supporting human souls through the desperation of an often unjust and discriminatory prison system falls not only on Bernadine, but on her many equally devoted, but jaded, colleagues, from lawyers and pastors, to medics and executioners. We witness the unravelling of these characters as the toll of providing hope to the hopeless takes shape in the form of the breakdown of personal relationships, and ultimately, a destructive numbing of mental faculty as the only available coping mechanism.

Watching the choreography of life leaving the world under controlled circumstances is intangibly horrifying. Contemplation of the situation of death row is inevitable, not only for the prisoners, but for all those involved and the respect they gallantly provide for victims and their families in an impossible predicament. A gut-punch of a film which embeds and burrows into the very fabric of morality.