Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is a 2011 documentary and sequel to the two previous films Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations. These three films chronicle the arrest, 18 year imprisonment, and eventual release of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, who have come to be known as the West Memphis 3. The films, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, are considered to play a substantial role in generating publicity, awareness, and support for the recent release of the three men.
This final third part of the trilogy of films examines the case and chronicles the final years in prison up to the eventual release of the three men. They had been accused of brutally murdering three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. The men were released after entering an Alford plea on August 19, 2011, a little known legal strategy allowing them to assert their innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict. It was this legal technique which was responsible for their freedom.
The conclusion to the trilogy about the plight of three wrongly convicted men has an intriguingly new, if bittersweet, slant. It’s an understatement to say that the documentary format comes off a lot better than the justice system. Destined to rank as one of the major achievements for an American documentary, the Paradise Lost project comes to a presumed end with Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.
Originally intended to be another installment in which the three men remained in prison, the film was to premiere on the HBO network in November 2011. The world premiere of the film was announced to occur at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011.
Due to the sudden August 19th release of the West Memphis Three, the filmmakers decided to postpone the film for another two months, to give the series a definitive ending, and a theatrical release, potentially allow qualification for Best Documentary Feature at the 84th Academy Awards. Interviews used for the film featuring the newly freed men began shooting the day following their release on August 20th. The film, in its original form, still made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, while the re-cut version premiered at the New York Film Festival. The re-cut version premiered on October 10, 2011. The three men, accompanied with their families, attorneys, and supporters, attended the event.
In this third installment the viewer can feel the very weight of more than 18 years of back and forth political maneuvering bearing down on you. The potential outcome sits on the shoulders of the filmmakers just as it does on the parents, judges, law enforcement officials and the West Memphis Three, the men who spent those years in prison, convicted of the murders, before being freed last summer.
Picking up ten years after the last film, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is designed so that it can be seen without the previous two movies. The fist half hour is almost entirely dedicated to bringing the audience up to speed. In 1993 they were arrested as teenagers for the murder of three children whose mangled bodies were found in the woods in West Memphis Arkansas. The bodies were so mutilated that unprepared authorities assumed that the murders must have been ritualistic and performed by Satanists (the type of delightful thinking that only comes from particularly enlightened areas of the south). The three teens were convicted on circumstantial evidence and targeted almost entirely because they were outsiders who dressed in black and listened to heavy metal.
Keep in mind that even though this is a complete stand alone film, it is still considered incomplete form without the other two movies in the series. Paradise Lost 3 is a powerful and disturbing documentary. It’s nice that it has been presented in such a way that requires no prior knowledge of the case or the other films. That’s guaranteed to attract new viewers, but might frustrate longtime supporters ever so slightly because the first half hour of the film is basically all recap. There is also the possibility of this being a series hurting the film’s chances at awards time. Still, this is vital viewing and collectively the Paradise Lost movies represent a remarkable achievement in documentary filmmaking. It’s rare that any film make a tangible impact on the real world, but as Echols himself says in the movie, without these documentaries he would have been dead and forgotten long ago. The Paradise Lost series is an incredible long-term documentary achievement and a story that needed to be told.
The film’s directors Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger.
Mr. Berlinger, Mr. Sinofsky and HBO have been celebrated, by some, for their roles in focusing attention on the case in two previous films (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills in 1996 and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations in 2000), and “Purgatory” is on the shortlist of documentaries being considered for an Oscar nomination. But the new film, despite the astounding story it tells, is the most conventional, least urgent and, cinematically, the least interesting of the three. Despite manifest flaws, the first two installments radiated passion and curiosity; the third speaks of exhaustion and compunction, of a job that needed to be finished.
Premiering January 12, 2012 on HBO
