Holy cow. What an unbelievably sharp, spotless lens to view the last half century of this country through. Truth is seriously stranger than fiction, too. It’s a tale so poignant it practically feels divinely planned.
I’m awestruck that such a perfect confluence of people and events exist to make up O.J.’s micro/macro story. It’s O.J.’s self-mythologizing as America’s self-mythologizing… the denial, idealism, exploitation, narcissism, greed, resentment, self-hatred, pride, jealousy, opportunism, revenge, tragedy - all of it reflected in one life. The doc focuses our larger cultural battles into fully encapsulated avatars - mirror images and competing themes everywhere in O.J’s personal and professional circles. I guess it takes the gravitational pull of celebrity to spin all of these pieces into a narrative this clear. O.J. is the once in a lifetime character elevated to exalted status who can convey how dissonantly we treat our past.
And there are no real lessons learned by the end of it. Maybe that’s what makes it feel most poignant of all? Even when O.J. is forced to make a brush with redemption through the trial...and then gets a second chance — it’s not enough to kill the ego, the opportunity is squandered. He turns a blind eye to his guilt and goes full-throttle into self-destructive decadence in a way that tracks with our nation’s historical reactions to failure. Seriously what the fuck. This doc is amazing. I can’t stop thinking about it. It so skillfully portrays the impossible tug-o-war between the small-scale human solutions to race relations and the unhealed lineage that brought America to this point. Devastating. Must see.