Early in “Rewind,” a documentary directed by Sasha Joseph Neulinger, the filmmaker’s father, Henry, says that people historically shot home movies to remember happy occasions, not to capture bad ones. That appears to have been the case in the Neulinger clan. But in “Rewind,” the filmmaker draws on an impressive cache of home videotapes to call attention to what lay beyond the frame: a pattern of sexual abuse by multiple members of his extended family.
The movie is structured to reveal secrets gradually, roughly the way they came to light, so saying too much would diminish the effect (although the charges against one prominent relative, the cantor Howard Nevison, were highly publicized). Neulinger interviews his parents, his sister and his psychiatrist, and a detective and a prosecutor involved in the cases.
The director recalls the experience of being abused and then seeing his mother, who didn’t know, offer food and give a hug to the abuser. He analyzes disturbing drawings from his childhood. And he and his father visit the father’s boyhood home. (The abuse, it turns out, bridged generations.)
Watching “Rewind” is harrowing, and one can only imagine how painful it was to make. While the movie has ambitions both sociological (raising awareness) and artistic (in one meta flourish, Neulinger shows his movie crew packing up at the end), it is the sort of film whose completion appears to have been the principal goal.
For the director, putting family members on camera clearly had a therapeutic value. Witnessing that unburdening feels almost ancillary, even intrusive. But “Rewind” could only be made by this filmmaker in this way, and that gives it an unsettling fascination.
Rewind
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
