New York’s Sing Sing Facility is a harsh place but it has its silver linings, the silver lining here being a Rehabilitation Through the Arts of RTA program centring on its co-founder, Divine G (Colman Domingo). GReg Kewdar’s Sing Sing‘s plot comes from a true story of one of Divine G’s crazier productions. During their winter season, they performed a time travel comedy. Divine G is the program’s sensitive top dog, realising, along with the program’s director (Paul Raci), that with each season comes new players.

For that new player, Divine G, the director, and the former’s best friend Mike Mike (Sean San Jose) choose Divine I (Clarence Macklin). Divine I seems more emotionally complex than the program’s other members. He’s also stepping on Divine G’s toes for pitching what ends up being the time travel comedy and by winning the role of Hamlet although in fairness, he’s one of the best Hamlets I’ve ever seen. As an aside, it’s interesting that this film references a play about people caring about different things.

Anyway, there are some films I watch where I think “this needs to introduce a character that has the opposite vibe as the rest just to see what happens”. Sing Sing delivers on that idea of characters’ disruptions, but these characters are careful for that disruption not to worsen for obvious reasons. Despite its setting, Sing Sing is specific to New York City while also touching on some universal truisms. The truism is that no matter the acting level, everyone does acting exercises that are admittedly corny.

All the world is a rehearsal, where these men display versions of bravery and joy for each other. Of course, everyone has their own version of being different, and these characters, despite some tensions, are open. And depicting a fictional version of the RTA program, Sing Sing displays its own version of neorealism. Of course, the central ‘conflict’ is between Divine I and Divine G but it finds time to depict other relationships. One of those is with Mike Mike, and the other is with his family on the outside.

Sing Sing beautifully depicts how fast changes within one relationship make the others tenuous. Everything seems tenuous except for Divine G and everyone else’s stay at the facility. The film shows how the system subjects them to parole hearings, a system that Divine G is hopeful towards. This film is. again, about characters who seem like they are unwilling to play each other’s games. Divine I ‘s initial hostility towards the exercises are nothing in comparison to the kind of questioning Divine G gets.

Let’s return, though, to Sing Sing‘s main thesis and then the themes that viewers can connect to. Divine I initially gets the designation of being the disruptor, but it eventually shows that that can be anyone. That designation also has a stigma here since most of the characters are racialized men who face incarceration. It’s a testament to the film that it believes that most people, despite their anger, want peace. 

Watch Sing Sing in select Canadian theatres.