The most challenging aspect of *Pahokee* for the typical American moviegoer (me) is its lack of an agenda. We are taught from childhood to negotiate our way through life according to a patchwork of social, religious, and political narrative frameworks, and we expect our edification (ostensibly the mission of the documentary filmmaker), like our education and entertainment, to reinforce a point of view, even one that (as so often is the case) may be trite and threadbare. So it's somewhat jarring when *Pahokee*'s filmmakers, the married team of Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas, present us with almost two hours of unobstructed (which is not to say unstructured) insight into the lives of four high school teenagers as they negotiate their way through the most important years of their own young lives. There are no interviews; there is no obtrusive soundtrack eliciting/soliciting emotion; there is no overt attempt to create dramatic tension or drama of any kind, really. The filmmakers make themselves so scarce that four teens raised on selfies are not tempted to play to the camera or to play-act at all, and instead we see their lives in a manner that seems as dispassionately rendered as a God's-eye view could be. Even phone-camera video interstitials from the teens reinforce the matter-of-factness of the film, instead of hijacking it into the realm of the CW teenage confessional or Family Channel docudrama.
What emerges is a revelation, because as the film progresses we experience these four lives as they are lived and our prejudices - I'm speaking of preconceived notions, not racial bias, although that shadow is always present, too - are quickly dismissed and our would-be sympathy becomes something closer to empathy. Pahokee is the second-poorest town in Florida, 57% African-American and 23% Latinx, but its inhabitants live their lives the same way Americans of all classes and ethnic backgrounds do. The teens in this film have the same concerns as kids in every high school in the nation: studying hard to get into colllege; being popular, playing sports, and yes, raising a child as a single parent. 100% typical American kids.
There is ample opportunity here for canned drama, if the filmmakers had been inclined in that direction. One of the four teens runs for the Pahokee equivalent of Homecoming Queen; one is a star on the football team that plays for the state championship (a championship that, even better for the potential melodramatist, becomes caught up in specious controversy); one is the daughter of Mexican immigrants studying hard to ensure her parents' sacrifice is repaid; one is the aforementioned single father who is also the leader of the marching band's drum line (his drum-off showdown with his counterpart on an opposing schools band is one of the film's best scenes). There is even a shooting at a park that spoils one of the events being documented. And yet, the filmmakers never opt for cheap narrative thrills, but instead maintain an even-tempered pace and delivery that unexpectedly only deepens our empathy for the subjects. There is no guile, but there is also no sentimentality, and the reward for viewers is a kind of insight into these four young lives that heavy-handed storytelling would not have allowed.
What emerges is a revelation, because as the film progresses we experience these four lives as they are lived and our prejudices - I'm speaking of preconceived notions, not racial bias, although that shadow is always present, too - are quickly dismissed and our would-be sympathy becomes something closer to empathy. Pahokee is the second-poorest town in Florida, 57% African-American and 23% Latinx, but its inhabitants live their lives the same way Americans of all classes and ethnic backgrounds do. The teens in this film have the same concerns as kids in every high school in the nation: studying hard to get into colllege; being popular, playing sports, and yes, raising a child as a single parent. 100% typical American kids.
There is ample opportunity here for canned drama, if the filmmakers had been inclined in that direction. One of the four teens runs for the Pahokee equivalent of Homecoming Queen; one is a star on the football team that plays for the state championship (a championship that, even better for the potential melodramatist, becomes caught up in specious controversy); one is the daughter of Mexican immigrants studying hard to ensure her parents' sacrifice is repaid; one is the aforementioned single father who is also the leader of the marching band's drum line (his drum-off showdown with his counterpart on an opposing schools band is one of the film's best scenes). There is even a shooting at a park that spoils one of the events being documented. And yet, the filmmakers never opt for cheap narrative thrills, but instead maintain an even-tempered pace and delivery that unexpectedly only deepens our empathy for the subjects. There is no guile, but there is also no sentimentality, and the reward for viewers is a kind of insight into these four young lives that heavy-handed storytelling would not have allowed.