Free in Deed was well-received at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. It is a powerful haunting film that deserves to be widely seen. Fascinatingly, many of the scenes that were shot in Pentecostal churches in Memphis use real life people rather than professional actors to show the nature of religious devotion. In that sense the film is in some ways partially a documentary as well as a scripted feature film. The tale – loosely based on real events - shows a mother's desperate efforts to find help for her sick child who is clearly suffering from some of severe psychological disorder. She takes him to a young well-intentioned faith healer who attempts to exorcise the demons within him. While the film can be viewed as critical of the reliance on what most rational people would call the use of faith to cure medical problems, I saw it as just critical of the doctors and the health care system that failed to provide any serious health care options to a family with few resources. That failure left them to turn to desperate means. The acting by the two leads, David Harewood and Edwina Findley, is excellent. The story is haunting and disturbing. We have come to associate faith healers with charlatans. These individuals in this film may be misguided, but they are sincere in their efforts. They deeply believe and they turn to God when all other means have failed to help a disturbed child. This disturbing film draws the viewer in. I did find some of the faith healing scenes a bit repetitive and felt it could have used some more editing. Well worth seeing for those interested in nexus of faith and modernity.
4 Reviews
Unfortunate
peggysue42221 July 2021
Mental illness is a far cry from being demon possessed. Both are very real and frightening. This movie depicts the way man thinks Jesus healed and is a far cry from the truth.
Don't know why we think being over emotional will work any better, than just saying the words Jesus said, without "theatrics." Truthfully movies like this just give Jesus a bad name because this is not how He acted or healed people. Watch the series "The Chosen," if you want to see a more accurate depiction.
Don't know why we think being over emotional will work any better, than just saying the words Jesus said, without "theatrics." Truthfully movies like this just give Jesus a bad name because this is not how He acted or healed people. Watch the series "The Chosen," if you want to see a more accurate depiction.
Amazing Film
StephanieBrownHair24 October 2015
Very intriguing story that shows story telling in its greatest form. The actress Edwina Findley was dynamic in every emotional range shared in this film. The true story shared on filmed made me want to go and read a book if one is available. The actor David Harewood was able to really capture the role he was in. The Drama was so intense that I was glued to the screen to see what will happen next. I totally see why this project won "Best Film" at the Venice Film Review in 2015. I believe that anytime faith on the big screen can be displayed with so may ranges is amazing. You cry, you laugh, you wonder and then you say WOW!! so hats off to Jake Mahaffy and thanks for using Memphis to share your vision of this TRUE STORY.
Worthwhile as social critique but faith healer characters don't appear very fleshed out
Turfseer12 March 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Working in cinema verité style, experimental filmmaker Jake Mahaffy has fashioned his part social critique and documentary-like narrative based on a true story about a faith healing gone bad. He employs only two professional actors, Edwina Findley and David Harewood, and the rest are culled mainly from the ranks of a Memphis Pentecostal church, where most of the action takes place.
Findlay does well in the main part as Melva, the harried mother of an autistic child, Benny, very convincingly played by newcomer, RaJay Chandler. Melva doesn't know what to do with Benny, who is the prototypical infant terrible, constantly screaming and banging his head against the wall.
Mahaffy does well in what turns out to be a welcome social critique for the first half of his narrative. It's the psychiatric profession that mainly comes under fire here along with an indifferent social services bureaucracy that forces people like Melva, as a last resort, to seek help from a cult-like religious institution such as the Pentecostal church depicted here.
The bottom line is that the modern day healers, with their psychotropic drugs that do more harm than good, provide few answers for harried mothers such as Melva, pretending that they offer solutions to parents of autistic children, when they clearly do not.
Mahaffy is on less solid ground in his depiction of the faith healers. The place is run by the main healer, Mother (played by the real-life Prophetess Libra who runs the Pentecostal church), along with Bishop (blues guitarist Preston Shannon), Harewood's Abe is the one they rely on to do the actual faith healings as he's already supposedly cured someone of cancer and has a reputation of someone always volunteering to be saved at the onset of each service.
Mother's panacea consists mainly of clearing Melva's apartment of evil influences including Halloween decorations and that's about the extent we learn about the church-goers' mindset. Abe, far less communicative, is all fire and brimstone, and gets a little too physical with Benny during the exorcism, which leads to the tragedy of the boy's death.
Mahaffy doesn't really know how to build suspense so he's content to depict real services in the church one after another, imparting to the entire piece a rather lugubrious and repetitious feel. His characters too do not really appear to be fleshed out (i.e. developed) except for the aforementioned Melva, as her story turns out to be the most compelling.
Despite winning the Horizons section at the Venice film Festival, Free in Deed, is a minor work, which might have worked better as a documentary than a low-budget feature.
Findlay does well in the main part as Melva, the harried mother of an autistic child, Benny, very convincingly played by newcomer, RaJay Chandler. Melva doesn't know what to do with Benny, who is the prototypical infant terrible, constantly screaming and banging his head against the wall.
Mahaffy does well in what turns out to be a welcome social critique for the first half of his narrative. It's the psychiatric profession that mainly comes under fire here along with an indifferent social services bureaucracy that forces people like Melva, as a last resort, to seek help from a cult-like religious institution such as the Pentecostal church depicted here.
The bottom line is that the modern day healers, with their psychotropic drugs that do more harm than good, provide few answers for harried mothers such as Melva, pretending that they offer solutions to parents of autistic children, when they clearly do not.
Mahaffy is on less solid ground in his depiction of the faith healers. The place is run by the main healer, Mother (played by the real-life Prophetess Libra who runs the Pentecostal church), along with Bishop (blues guitarist Preston Shannon), Harewood's Abe is the one they rely on to do the actual faith healings as he's already supposedly cured someone of cancer and has a reputation of someone always volunteering to be saved at the onset of each service.
Mother's panacea consists mainly of clearing Melva's apartment of evil influences including Halloween decorations and that's about the extent we learn about the church-goers' mindset. Abe, far less communicative, is all fire and brimstone, and gets a little too physical with Benny during the exorcism, which leads to the tragedy of the boy's death.
Mahaffy doesn't really know how to build suspense so he's content to depict real services in the church one after another, imparting to the entire piece a rather lugubrious and repetitious feel. His characters too do not really appear to be fleshed out (i.e. developed) except for the aforementioned Melva, as her story turns out to be the most compelling.
Despite winning the Horizons section at the Venice film Festival, Free in Deed, is a minor work, which might have worked better as a documentary than a low-budget feature.
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