Coming to theatres today, Friday, September 5: THE RULE
Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno’s profile of a Newark prep school debuted at the Montclair Film Festival this year. It now comes to NYC, with a Los Angeles run to follow next week.
Founded in 1868, St Benedict’s Prep is run by the monks of the Newark Abbey and operates according to the principles of the Rule of Saint Benedict, stressing community, trust, leadership, commitment, and several other virtues that have helped its predominantly African- and Latin-American students to succeed where so many other inner city schools instead see dismal drop out rates and underperformance. Monks go through each of these principles at length through the course of the Bongiornos’ film, offering practical lessons for how they apply them to their students and their particular circumstances – often involving broken homes, the lack of male role models, gangs, and the like. While students are heard from on occasion, more of their voices would have helped to cement the effectiveness of the pedadogy. Instead, intermittently, the filmmakers interject with crude animation and strange computer-voiced factoids which unfortunately cheapen the proceedings as a whole. Similarly, an extended consideration of the school’s history would be welcome – what’s related here – the internal schism that came after the 1967 Newark riots and eventually led to the closure of the school and the exodus of several of the monks – is more intriguing than the rule play-by-play offered instead.
what (not) to doc 