Theater of the Field

It feels like summer is slipping away.

I figure tonight's outdoor movie may the last of the season. After last night's 3 a.m. bedtime, I thought I'd take a quick nap before the film, only to wake up at 7:15 to fading daylight. Given the cooler temperature, I made sure to bring a sweater to the movie. Say it isn't so, summer.

I stopped by Tarrant's to-go on my way to Tredegar, in need of some fried chicken for a movie snack and wound up running into the new bride of a favorite bartender. We lamented August's rush to September and how we still want more time at the beach and river.

From last month's Starry Night Cinema Lawn Chair Series I'd learned that I didn't need to tote along my lawn chair and instead took one of the folding chairs set up in the grassy field above the iron works to enjoy my chicken dinner and the lights of downtown.

Last time, it was after 9 before it was dark enough to begin the film but not so tonight (sniff), I'm afraid. I'd barely wiped the grease off my fingers when the documentary "Evolution of a Criminal" was introduced.

I've been an avowed documentary dork for longer than I can remember, but I've never seen a documentary where the filmmaker (Darius Clark Monroe) is also the subject of the film. It can be a tad disconcerting to watch as subjects in the film answer Monroe's questions about his youthful bad behavior directly to him.

And what bad behavior! By age 16, his parents are in such dire financial straits that the teenager decides to get a couple friends to help him rob a bank to help his family's situation. Only a teenager could decide on such a foolish plan and not see the million red flags waving.

So of course they're eventually caught and Monroe is sentenced to five years in jail at age 17. It's tragic, but it's only right. The kid did rob a band, terrorizing customers with a gun and leaving with $140,000.

Interviewing his parents, grandmother, cousins, schoolmates and teachers, he asks the hard questions about who he was and if they ever expected such behavior out of him (no one had). One aunt admits that six people in their extended family have been to jail, so maybe it's in the kid's blood.

Still, it's unnerving to have a subject talk to the camera using the pronoun "you" as they share their memories with Monroe. When he talks about his time in prison, he says it's the mundane stuff he misses: washing dishes, taking out trash, smiling at his parents. It's intensely moving stuff.

But the best part of the story is that he gets his GED while in prison and when he gets out, he applies to NYU, having decided he wants to be a filmmaker and tell his story. For the record, he does not mention his prior convict status when he applies to the school.

Later he interviews some of his film professors, asking if they'd have treated him differently if they'd known. Sadly, they say the answer is probably, yes. The white, Texan district attorney who prosecuted him says she's happy he's turned his life around for now, but she won't believe it's true until he's 50 and still out of trouble. Ouch. Talk about racial profiling.

Call me gullible, but I saw a straight A kid who took honors classes and was psychologically affected by his family's poverty, making a stupid uninformed decision to "fix" the situation at a point in his young life when he wasn't capable of making truly thoughtful choices. After tonight, I also saw a gifted filmmaker, one I'm curious to see develop other stories beyond his own cautionary tale.

Afrikana Film Festival had chosen another outstanding offering by a black filmmaker, one I wouldn't have seen if they hadn't brought it to town.

Part of the charm of an outdoor movie is not being hemmed in by four walls while watching. Midway through tonight's film, fireworks began exploding over near Oregon Hill. A long freight train chugged along the river, its screeching competing with the movie's soundtrack. Someone sent four lit sky lanterns burning orange and sparkly soaring into the black sky.

Walking back to my car, I saw people walking along the riverfront under a clear sky and a yellow wedge of a moon. Realizing that nights this lovely are to be enjoyed while we still can, I joined them.

Gather ye summer nights while ye may. Color me wistful to see another warm season on its way out.