60
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
The proceedings have a certain haunted quality, thanks to the dramatic setting and the stark black-and-white cinematography by Steve Cosens that fully conveys its bleakness.
Music from the Big House
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Canada,
- United States
- 2010
- · 87m
Director
Bruce McDonald
Cast
Rita Chiarelli
Genre
Documentary,
Music
Rita Chiarelli, an award-winning recording artist, has decided to take a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the blues—Louisiana State Maximum Security Penitentiary a.k.a Angola Prison. She never imagined that her love of the blues would lead her to play with inmates serving life sentences for murder, rape and armed robbery. In what was once the bloodiest prison in America, inmates relatives will be invited to listen alongside other prisoners, to hear remarkable voices singing stories of hope and redemption. Let yourself be swept away by one of Blues’ most soulful pilgrim daughters who is finding out if music really is an escape.
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What are critics saying?
50
Village Voice
It finally feels too cautious, as if digging a little deeper might compromise the prevailing tone of tentative uplift.
50
Variety
The performances are fun, if musically only adequate -- there are no evident virtuosi languishing within Angola's walls -- and Chiarelli's attempts to frame matters philosophically fall a little flat.
50
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
Even with a gripping subject like blues-singing convicts, the documentary Music from the Big House has a disconcerting emotional distance.
40
The New York Times
The filmmakers hesitate at going deeper into the dark places of the prisoners' biographies and the storied prison itself. The one wouldn't exist without the other, and Ms. Chiarelli's rambling platitudes are no substitute.
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