Leaving Neverland (2019)

This long documentary sets out to answer once again the key questions regarding Michael Jackson as a pedophile: Was he one, and why does it matter now after his death? At this point, a definitive answer is as futile in its way as deciding how JFK died, but Leaving Neverland is not a useless stop for anyone with lingering curiosity. It hasn't convinced true believers, and it's likely to spoil your mood, as it did mine, but it has its merits. It's one of the quicker four-hour documentaries you'll ever see, engrossing and credible. Perhaps the single most affecting aspect of this sad story, one of the saddest in all popular culture, is not so much the evidence it offers for sex abuse as its clearsighted understanding of the damage done by it, which continues long after the abuse and indeed is quite apparently still going on for the two telling their stories in full for the first time here. These two—Wade Robson, who later became a choreographer for NSYNC and Britney Spears, and James Safechuck—are articulate and believable. Inevitably celebrity and the vast amounts of money at stake cloud the issues. When you are rich and powerful your lies carry outsize weight, as we know from present-day American politics (the Supreme Court refers to it as "freedom of speech"). Safechuck declined to participate in the second round of Jackson's legal troubles in the 2000s, but both supported him the first time in the '90s and Robson testified for him in 2005. Jackson paid a huge sum to the first complainants in the '90s and then won an acquittal in the 2000s case. But over the years, especially now with people like Robson and Safechuck coming forward, it's hard to escape the sense that Jackson was pretty much what he looked like, a pedophile, damaged emotionally in his own youth and indulged for his wealth and celebrity. I always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt—and for the usual reasons, because I appreciated his music and legacy—but the size of the settlements, the fact that he did settle, his own ever-worsening bizarre behavior, and the pattern of constant credible accusations that followed him for most of his adult life (he died at age 50) perpetually undermined any faith I could put in him. By "credible," I suppose I should say, I mean the internal consistencies of most of these stories, particularly now Robson's and Safechuck's, as well as their consistencies with known behavior of pedophiles. Among the most chilling aspects of Leaving Neverland are the stories of Jackson's grooming behavior, which is sophisticated and about as far from child-like as it's possible to be. The mothers of both Robson and Safechuck also appear with extensive interviews—they have often been hotly assaulted in the public discourse as much and sometimes more than Jackson. Obviously they made huge errors in judgment—they allowed the sleepovers, and they believed their sons when their sons lied to protect Jackson. I have my own issues with these mothers, more related to the seductions of celebrity, but I'm not sure how many people judging them so harshly would have behaved that much differently if they had been in the strange situation. We'll probably never know the absolute truth of Michael Jackson's life and whether or not he did all the things he's accused of. But Leaving Neverland is already an important part of any judgment.