You won’t make it through Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About
His Father without crying.
Sure, director Kurt Kuenne’s tribute to his murdered friend, Andrew,
has its flaws. Kuenne uses some cheap editing cuts and lobs Michael
Moore-esque vitriol at public officials who mishandled the case of
Shirley Turner, Andrew’s spurned ex and likely killer (at one point,
Kuenne superimposes Conan O’Brien-style moving lips on a still photo of
a judge, as he angrily parrots back her verdict).
Of course, it’s unlikely Moore has ever felt as strongly about any
of his documentary subjects—not even that damn plant closure in
Flint, Michigan—as Kuenne does about Andrew’s death, and the
(Canadian) bureaucratic travesty that followed it. And Kuenne made his
film for a beautiful reason: to pick the brains of the people who’d
loved Andrew, so that he could share what he learned with Zachary, the
baby Turner announced she was carrying shortly after Andrew’s death.
Then, near Dear Zachary‘s end, its story takes another
devastating twist.
It’s been said the way Kuenne leads up to that surprise is
manipulative. It’s also heartbreakingly effective.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.
Dear Zachary has affected me as nothing I’ve seen on tv in years. It may have been manipulated at times, but perhaps that was necessary. This detailed two tragedies that need not have occurred and revealed how the system can be so horribly wrong in its judgement of how to treat suspects. This documentary was jarring but unforgetable.