Life With Murder - Interview with John Kastner
- Posted: 24th Feb 2011
- Category: Articles
- Tags: feature documentary, canada, mason jenkins, crime, family
By Olivia Humphreys
When their son is accused of murdering his sister, a mother and father face perhaps the most awful decision any parent could have to make: whether to break with their son or accept him back into the family. With astonishing footage shot over a ten-year period, from minutes after the crime was committed to the present, the film follows the family’s evolving relationships.
Olivia Humphreys spoke to director John Kastner.
OH: You’ve made several films about criminals (Monster in the Family, The Lifer and the Lady’). What aspects of the criminal mind do you find particularly interesting?
JK: Shockingly, I am most fascinated by a criminal who is like me i.e. someone with whom I can identify, about whom I feel ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. For instance I have struggled with a bad temper all my life like the killer Ron Cooney in my film The Lifer and the Lady. He is an otherwise good person (yes! I know how incredible that sounds but it’s true) who succumbed to his temper for various reasons. I know that, had my parents been less strict with me, my temper might have led me to do heaven knows what. Conversely, I cannot identify with professional hit men. There is kind of cold, unemotional type of violence there that is completely foreign to me and I have never been tempted to make a film about them.
OH: Why do you think documentary is a good medium for exploring criminality?
JK: I once had a public argument with print journalists who insisted that people perform in front of the camera, and therefore the camera is an unreliable witness. But a film can often capture something in the face of a subject - the eyes, the expressions - that print reportage cannot convey. If a cabinet minister denies that he pocketed inappropriate funds a print journalist may have to report it simply as, “Mr X denied he received the funds; ‘No, I never took the money’ he said” – even though he may be blinking and perspiring away. But film captures and conveys these things and suddenly the very same words can be interpreted quite differently.
OH: I would say Mason Jenkins [tried and found guilty of his sister’s murder] comes across as inscrutable - having made the film, how well do you now feel you understand him?
JK: When people ask what I think of Mason – and they often do, wanting to know if I think he is a psychopath or whatever – I always say that I prefer to let the film speak for itself. However, I will say that, part of the reason Mason speaks with such stunning candour in some parts of the film is that in the course of our relationship I learned that he had a pretty wild sense of humour; I came to understand that, by being able to speak or rather joke about the unspeakable with him this way, he felt more comfortable opening up to me later as he did so remarkably in the film.
OH: It’s really fascinating to watch how Mason - someone for whom lying and evading the truth has been the norm for years – communicates…
JK: Of course Mason’s lying becomes a central issue in the story. He is the biggest liar I have ever met and I say this with some awe. He is one of those liars who can look you straight in the eye and tell you black is white and the moon is made of green cheese and when you show him photographs proving it isn’t, he is doesn’t blink an eye, simply barrels on brazenly insisting he never said it was…
On the witness stand Mason’s lying absolutely did him in. He testified against his lawyer’s advice and the crown prosecutor made mincemeat of him by turning his lies against him. Most devastatingly, the Crown actually began to count his lies out loud with Mason on the witness stand (“So that would be Lie # 18, would it not, Mr Jenkins?). Thus we (the film crew) expected him to lie, lie, lie, no surprise there. What we did not expect from this self-confessed “habitual liar” were the stunning truths he told later in the filming, disclosures of such remarkable candour that they transformed the story, the film, and the view of crime itself as held for over a decade by the police, the family and everybody else.
OH: You ask questions that the Jenkins family had been avoiding for years. Were you worried that the truth emerging now might be traumatic for them - that it might be better to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’?
JK: Always, and not only my questions but the shattering police videos taken on "the night", not to mention that heartbreaking 911 call [two key pieces of archive used in the film]- in short would the film cause them to re-live that terrible night? Especially worrisome after learning that Brian had been traumatized for a long time by flashbacks of finding Jennifer's body - so much so he required the help of a trauma specialist, Dr. Bill McDermott, for years, to help him work through it.
But the timing of my approach to the Jenkins was fortuitous for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it was ten years after the murder (Jan 6 1998) and after avoiding the subject for so long they were ready for some answers from Mason. We discussed the matter for months, exploring various possible repercussions of the program on their lives: what if Mason finally admits to the murder during the production - could they handle it? The police videos and 911 call were devastating - would it rip the wound open for them again? Should they look at them at all? Tough questions indeed.
For another thing, I actually had a prior positive relationship with the Jenkins before the film. Mason had appeared fleetingly in an earlier film of mine, Monster in the Family, another inmate's story which I had shot in the same prison a couple of years earlier. That film helped the other inmate, Martin Ferrier, enormously and was very well received by Ferrier and the other inmates. The Jenkins knew this. So Mason and his parents were extremely up for it and trusting from the get-go.
The turning point for me was when I saw those police videos. I knew the Jenkins had been stigmatized in their community and I felt that anyone watching those videos just had to feel for them. But I needed their approval, both morally and legally. I laid it out for the Jenkins in a series of conversations: the videos would be excruciating for them to watch - and indeed perhaps they shouldn't watch them at all - but I believed they would help them in with the community, put even their harshest critics in their shoes. Could they stand it? They decided they could. As they weighed these issues they asked the trauma psychologist what he thought. McDermott met with us and gave the project and us his blessing. He felt our concern for the Jenkins was genuine. And Leslie and Brian have said they found the experience therapeutic.
OH: You’ve had some great reactions to the film, including a change in attitude from many of the Jenkins’ neighbours in Chatham, where they had been treated as pariahs for maintaining contact with their son. Were there any reactions that disappointed you?
JK: I make films that are quite strong and often controversial but given the fact that feelings run very high in North America about issues such as crime, capital punishment and abortion I was surprised at how little backlash there was.
That said, I was disappointed in one thing. Although the response to Mr and Mrs Jenkins’ anguishing dilemma was overwhelmingly kind, I was disappointed to find that a small number of people quite close to them were not very empathetic after seeing the film. These were people who knew Jennifer, the murder victim, and I can only speculate that perhaps after learning the details of her final moments – revealed for the first time in the film – they found the material particularly disturbing after all these years. And maybe this in turn made them angrier than ever at Mason and less forgiving of his parents’ support of him. But I’m just guessing.
Life With Murder is screening at the Fronline Club on Monday 7th March. To find out more and book tickets see the Frontline website.