Once in a while a film comes along where the filmmaker has made every right choice. As I was watching Garrett Bradley’s Time I kept nodding my head. Of course black and white was the right choice to tell the story merging archival footage with new footage. Of course you plunge the audience into the story without talking heads or time markations. And most of all of course that’s how you end to achieve catharsis.

Let’s back up a little, I’m getting ahead of myself. A chronicle of the life of Fox Rich, an activist and mother of six boys, Time tells the story of a family and the grave injustice of a broken system. Rich’s husband Rob is serving a 60 year sentence for a robbery they both committed in the 1990s. She got out after serving more than 3 years and for the last 20 year has been trying to get him out while raising their family. At the same time she’s been documenting her life and her kids’ for Rob. 

Bradley seamlessly integrates Rich’s video diaries with what she shot of her 19 years after the robbery. We are never sure when the diaries end and the newly shot footage starts. Just like time, an endless loop of memories filled with both heartache and joy. The black and white photography makes Time more mesmerizing and adds poignancy and heft to the story. 

This is a story ostensibly about Black suffering. The sentence that Rob gets does not equal the crime he committed in a moment of desperation. Rich knows this is a system continuing the enslavement of Black people and rightfully declares herself an abolitionist. What’s on screen though is not the suffering of this family. But rather the resilience, the fight and the hope. That’s what makes Time sublime. It gets to the bone of its message without hammering it through. It’s a gentle poke of a movie achieving catharsis with the cumulative emotions it elicits by the end.  We get there because Bradley deftly uses all her arsenal as a filmmaker to show the cost and the toll it takes for this family to have a moment of peace. 

Time will be available on Amazon Prime on October 16th.

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