TWO TOWNS OF JASPER

Even if you aren't racist, what in the world would compel you to stop and offer a black man a ride when you know that the two men you're with ARE viciously racist?

Two Towns of Jasper doesn't waste any time: The opening sequence is of the sheriff pointing out bloodstains and human tissue on the road where James Byrd was dragged behind a pickup truck for 3.3 miles after being offered a ride by three drunk young men. However, Jasper wisely doesn't focus on the event itself (which happened in 1998), but introduces us to several citizens of Jasper, Texas and how they feel about Byrd's fate, the trials of his killers, and their thoughts on race relations in Jasper.

It's not hard to see how much of a difference it made to send two crews out filming for this documentary. Though some citizens claim that the incident inspired people to bring down racial barriers (both metaphorically and physically), it's impossible to deny that the environment in fact became even more racially charged after Byrd's murder. The two directors document the spectrum of attitudes in the year or so after the fact, and skillfully edit to really give you a sense of how deeply this event must have scarred the town of Jasper—not so much by creating new wounds, but by deepening old ones, which is much worse.

The filmmakers focus on several individual subjects as the three successive trials proceed. The first two men are found guilty and sentenced to death, but it is the third trial, Shawn Berry's, that truly commands our attention as the focus shifts to Berry's brother. He believes that Shawn is innocent: "Just because he was there, doesn't mean he was guilty!" The blacks point out that Berry was driving the truck, and they feel that he's the worst of the lot. It was obvious to everyone that the other two guys would be found guilty, but Berry didn't have a history of racism, had black friends (it sounds like a lame defense, but it counts for something), and reportedly only stopped to offer Byrd a ride. The blacks don't buy this: Even if you aren't racist, what in the world would compel you to stop and offer a black man a ride when you know that the two men you're with ARE viciously racist? These guys' torsos are nearly completely covered with tattoos of "White Power" messages and symbols, even a picture of a hanging black man on one of them. Their argument, in short, is that there's no way Berry didn't know they were racist, and it follows that there's no way his intentions were as simple as offering Byrd a ride.

In the end, Berry is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. There's a spellbinding scene in which one of our black female subjects comes face to face with Berry's brother and questions him about how he can possibly think that his brother is innocent. Also, as Berry is being led to the police car, a black person yells, "Hey, at least you got it better than Byrd!" I mean, not losing sight of how awful the subject matter is, that made me feel good. In the end, even though Jasper is in digital and is pretty minimum-requirements in the style department, the simplicity ends up working in favor of such a raw issue.