After Parkland

This documentary might’ve been better with another few years’ worth of reporting and perspective.

What feels important in Parkland is less about pushing any kind of political agenda or viewpoint than about simply listening, and bearing witness.

Taguchi and Lefferman approach it all less like journalists or vérité documentarians than friendly guests who want to be respectful yet connect to something deeper about pain, mourning and forward movement.

After Parkland is not easy to watch, and certain choices (of images, of music) could be construed as calculated. But the movie succeeds where it counts: showing the reverberations of violence long after most cameras left.

After Parkland has its gun politics, and its aching heart, in the right place, but we need more from a movie about this subject. We need to ask how where the contemporary American heart of darkness is coming from.

The film succeeds as an astutely constructed, sensitive piece of journalism that becomes a moving account of dealing with grief and irreparable loss.

Pollack’s focus on what can be done in his daughter Meadow’s name becomes more admirable as the film goes on, and his attention to specifics might have been adopted to the benefit of this well-meaning, touching, but sometimes evasive film.