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 paradise lost, revelations dvd
The devil went down to Memphis. You're 16 years old, and what if your entire life was stolen away from you because you don't fit in? One day you're the town outsider, wearing black and listening to Metallica. The next you're accused of a triple-child homicide, branded a Satanist and thrown into prison. It sounds like the stuff of persecution nightmares but it actually happened, as chronicled in two documentaries, Paradise Lost and Revelations, both out now on DVD, examining the chilling case of the teenagers who became known as The West Memphis Three.  On 05 May, 1993, in Arkansas, West Memphis, the murdered bodies of three 8-year-old boys were discovered in a woodland clearing. Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Steve Branch were found naked, tied ankle to wrist with their own shoelaces. They had been beaten, and Christopher Byers had been stabbed in the groin and castrated. In the heart of America's Bible-belt, the deeply religious populous set about finding the killer. Going on hearsay from a local juvenile probation officer, the police served up three suspects: Jessie Misskelley Jr, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols. Jessie, a teenager with severe learning difficulties, had been brought in for questioning. After a 12-hour interrogation, of which only two fragments totalling 46 minutes were actually recorded, the police extracted a confession from him.  Directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the duo behind last year’s Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, Paradise Lost is an extensive reportage of the trial itself. Their level of access to the defence and prosecution, the victims’ families and the evolving portrait of the WM3, is jaw-dropping, as is the narrow-minded behaviour of the small town line-up who people the film. In 1994, Jason was sentenced to life without parole and Jessie got life plus 40 years. Damien was given the death penalty. Eleven years later they remain in prison. Choosing to advocate with their cameras rather than join the worldwide campaign to free the boys, Berlinger and Sinofsky returned to West Memphis four years on, to make Revelations, a film with a clear-cut agenda, to establish that there is more than a dunghill of reasonable doubt around their guilt. As yet there is no happy ending. On the cusp of a third documentary being made, these two films are a must-own.
Skye Sherwin
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills and Revelations: Paradise Lost 2, out now on Warp Films.
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