Sundance London: ‘The House I Live In’ Review

Sundance London promotional poster.

The House I Live In (directed by Eugene Jarecki) is a manipulative, preachy, heavy documentary about the persecution of drug addicts in American society.

I know, I rolled my eyes when I saw the synopsis, too…but what the synopsis doesn’t tell you is that The House I Live In is one of the best American documentaries in recent memory.

Jarecki embarked on the project of examining the failure of the War on Drugs after taking a look at the family of his childhood caretaker, actually named Nanny. As Nanny’s family has been riddled with problems of drug addictions (one of her sons died from AIDS due to sharing heroin needles in the early ’90s), Jarecki takes a personal initiative to see what is going on with this crisis in America.

Interviews in the documentary vary from David Simon (creator of HBO’s The Wire) and columnist Charles Bowden, to judges, narcotics officers, inmates, and even drug dealers. Simon is the most articulate of all the interviewees, offering choice sound bytes like “Nobody jails their population like we do. It’s Draconian and it doesn’t work.”

The House I Live In’s main argument is that drug addicts in America are an oppressed minority—Jarecki draws many parallels to the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, which seem heavy handed at first but appropriate by the time the credits roll. Essentially, he is saying that in all of these cases, political leaders have placed the blame for social ills on one group of people—people thought to be “different” and “threatening” by the rest of the population.

According to Jarecki, politicians use the War on Drugs to gain votes. No one will win an election by not being hard on drugs. The cycle started with Richard Nixon, who actually allocated 2/3 of the narcotics budget to treat suffering addicts (a policy that Jarecki seems to think would have been a great help), but by the 1972 election, Nixon abandoned the treatment route in favor of a crackdown of arrests on addicts and dealers. David Simon goes on to explain that in the flawed law enforcement system—which values “stats” over actual law—a narcotics officer could make upwards of 30 nonviolent drug arrests in one month, whereas a regular officer may only make 1 or 2 arrests a month solving a robbery or rape (things Simon refers to as “real crimes”). Simon goes on to point out that in this system,when one officer makes 30 times the arrests of the other, “Who do you think is going to get the promotion?”

Jarecki doesn’t just point out everything wrong in the system; he also offers solutions. One of the main targets of the failing policy is the use of “mandatory minimums”—that a certain drug charge carries a mandatory prison sentence, with no chance of appeal. Even worse, crack cocaine sentences are set to a 100:1 ratio to regular cocaine sentences. That means that someone caught with 5 grams of crack receive the same sentence as someone caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine—and 90% of the people charged with crack-related incidents are black.

The film certainly draws attention to an issue plaguing our inner cities. While other documentaries such as Waiting for Superman have presented an entitled white man’s point of view of how inner city youths should be treated, The House I Live In strikes right for the emotional core. It never claims that drugs aren’t bad, just that America’s handling of drug addicts for the last 30 years has been a failure.

The House I Live In is a dark, fascinating, upsetting documentary that digs deep into the drug war in America. Because of its in-depth interviews, masterful editing, beautiful camerawork, and rock-solid research, it may just be the best documentary I have ever seen. A

About Joel Kahn

Joel is currently a film major at BU. He hails from South Florida, and started at The Quad writing about food. He is now the publisher of The Quad.

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