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The House I Live In

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Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany · 2012
1h 50m
Director Eugene Jarecki
Starring Eugene Jarecki
Genre Documentary

In the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer, and destroyed impoverished communities at home and abroad. Yet drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong, and what can be done?

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

70

Variety by

A ballsy mix of interviews and editorializing that's daring enough to question a costly crackdown that has long had the public's support.

75

Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker

The mixture of different techniques and varied views results in a rich, multi-faceted look at one of America's most misguided policy initiatives.

60

Time Out by David Fear

Whenever the film focuses more on Jarecki's hand-wringing than deconstructing the war itself, you wish someone would have looked the filmmaker in the eye and just said no.

83

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

A personal work not because the director chooses to make himself a part of the story, but rather because he implicates all of us in it.

75

The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth

While it's messily put together, with a sprawling and at times unfocused narrative that often gets in the way of itself, it doesn't deny the power of the facts Jarecki brings to bear on a misguided program that hasn't stopped the demand for drugs, that has disenfranchised the poor and minorities, and created an expensive prison industry.

80

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

It's easy to take issue with a documentary like The House I Live In, which tackles too much in too brief a time and glosses over complexities, yet this is also a model of the ambitious, vitalizing activist work that exists to stir the sleeping to wake.

70

Village Voice by Melissa Anderson

What's riveting and attention grabbing in Jarecki's recapitulations of failed policy are some of the talking heads he has assembled, including "The Wire" creator David Simon and historian Richard Lawrence Miller.

83

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

The result is a movie that jumps all over the place, but with the ultimate intention of showing how the public's attitudes and assumptions about drugs have changed over the past half-century, guided by politicians and businessmen with a stake in misinformation.

100

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

David Simon, creator of "The Wire," who argues that the targeting of minorities, fused with mandatory sentencing, has turned the war on drugs into ''a holocaust in slow motion.''

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