By Jake Ten Pas, Special to The Oregonian
December 14, 2009, 6:04AM
Tommy Davis, HBO
When: 10 p.m. Monday
Channel: HBO
Online: hbo.comMaking a documentary about a homicide is a challenging proposition. One person will never tell his or her side of the story.
Making a documentary about domestic violence and a family for whom it led to a deadly conclusion is just as challenging. There's a horrifying story to be told, but the telling could easily be manipulated to evoke a stronger, more simplistic response. The available images and sounds that must serve as the bones of the narrative are incomplete. They can be assembled in such a way that either faithfully re-creates the tragedy or renders it unrecognizable to those who lived it.
Whether "Every ... Day of My Life" tells the story as it was or subtly shapes it to make it a more devastating portrait of domestic violence is something only the Maldonado family of Grants Pass, and those who lived through it with them, will ever know. As a judge says while pronouncing the sentence in the final moments of the film, it's hard to imagine that it didn't happen exactly as they said.
On May 1, 2005, Wendy Maldonado called 9-1-1. "I just killed my husband," she confessed to the southern Oregon operator. She was aided by her oldest son, Randy, then 16. They bludgeoned and hacked Aaron Maldonado to death with a hammer and a hatchet. She was sentenced to 10 years in jail, and her son received five.
The film documents her last four days of freedom, in spring 2006, interspersing the footage with home movies, interviews with Randy in jail (because he was deemed a flight risk, he wasn't released on bail), and interviews with the rest of their family, neighbors and friends.
Those interviewed recount domestic violence so extreme that it's hard to imagine living through it. There are remembrances of burnings with bent coat hangers, brooms broken over heads and threats of mutilation and death by machete.
There are details so horrific they couldn't be made up, like the children's drawings covering the holes Wendy's head left in the walls.
Southern Oregon Public Defender's Office
A photo taken at the Maldonados home is included in the HBO documentary "Every ... Day of My Life."
At one heartbreaking moment in the film, the family sits around the dining room table -- the children, who will soon see their mother incarcerated, reading the statements they've prepared for her sentencing.
Joshua, 15, reads his. "I think it's wrong that my mom and Randy have to go away because I haven't had a normal life with them. I think it's wrong that my family will not be whole again for another 10 years. Then I will be an adult."
Even worse is the scene in which Randy describes his decision to accompany his mom to kill his father because he can't stand the thought of her being forced to do it alone.
Unlike fictional films, which critics might hyperbolically describe as "gut-wrenching" or "tear-jerking," "Every ... Day of My Life" is actually both of those things. It's real, and it never flinches. The title comes from Wendy's description to the 9-1-1 operator -- when she called after killing her husband -- of how often he beat her.
He didn't just beat her, though. According to Wendy and her children, he threatened to kill her again and again. In home movies, we see him kicking deer carcasses and licking blood from them. We see him forcing his infant child to fire a shotgun. We see Wendy robotically blowing kisses to the camera, as if she knows that's what's expected of her. We never actually see Aaron delivering the beatings described, but the evidence is everywhere, from the holes in the wall to the holes in Wendy's mouth where her teeth used to be.
HBO
Tyler Maldonado, whose mother Wendy Maldonado, killed his father, testifies at her sentencing. Her last days of freedom are documented in HBO documentary "Every ... Day of My Life."
There's also the moment at the sentencing, where Paul, Aaron's brother, rants at Wendy, "Your day will come." There is probably another story -- of Aaron's family and what they've gone through in the wake of his death. That isn't what the film is about.
It's about a family finally on the verge of living right at the exact moment two of its five members are sent to jail. It might also be about a failed justice system, the consequences of not dealing with violence sooner, the unreported nature of domestic violence. That's for viewers to decide.
As Wendy is taken into custody, the camera pauses for a moment on the word "Intake" stenciled on the jail door. The filmmakers could have gone in for one final look at her children's faces, but it doesn't take that easy, emotionally manipulative way out. There's nothing more to say.
-- Jake Ten Pas
No comments:
Post a Comment