{"id":183256,"date":"2021-02-19T21:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-17-blocks-with-film-summary-and-movie-review\/"},"modified":"2021-02-19T21:55:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T18:55:00","slug":"watch-17-blocks-with-film-summary-and-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-17-blocks-with-film-summary-and-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch 17 Blocks with film summary and movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a4215de47dd2\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a4215de47dd2\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-17-blocks-with-film-summary-and-movie-review\/#%E2%80%9CWatch_17_Blocks_Online%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Watch 17 Blocks Online&#8221;<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-5' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-5'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-5' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-5'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-5' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-5'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-17-blocks-with-film-summary-and-movie-review\/#Matt_Zoller_Seitz\" >Matt Zoller Seitz<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-17-blocks-with-film-summary-and-movie-review\/#17_Blocks_2021\" >17 Blocks (2021)<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWatch_17_Blocks_Online%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Watch 17 Blocks Online&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.rogerebert.com\/uploads\/review\/primary_image\/reviews\/17-blocks-movie-review-2021\/17-blocks-movie-review-2021.jpg\"><\/img><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<section>&#8220;17 Blocks,&#8221; a documentary about twenty years in the life of a Washington, D.C. family affected by drugs and violence,\u00a0is such an emotionally punishing film that you might have to steel yourself\u00a0at\u00a0a couple of points to get through the roughest patches. This is by no means a knock against the quality of the filmmaking or the unvarnished truth of the events it depicts, but a warning that the household depicted in this movie suffers the torments of\u00a0Job (whose name is invoked by a preacher presiding over a funeral later in the story) and that the light at the end of the tunnel is a long time coming, and glimpsed only briefly before the end credits roll.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<section>\n<p>Taking us from the end of the millennium through late 2018, &#8220;17 Blocks&#8221;\u00a0refers to the distance between the home of the film&#8217;s main family, the Sanfords, and the U.S. Capitol. Much has been made in journalism, history, and American cinema\/television of the proximity between the seat of American federal power and the mostly black, working-class-to-poor neighborhoods that have predominated in the city of\u00a0Washington,\u00a0D.C. (at least until recently, when gentrification started ramping up the white population and pricing Black people out\u2014something that would h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>en to the Sanfords, too). But it&#8217;s hard to think of another nonfiction feature that depicts the contrasts and ironies as plainly and powerfully as this one. &#8220;17 Blocks&#8221;\u00a0focuses with unfussy intimacy on a\u00a0mother, her children, and her grandchildren.\u00a0All are affected, directly or indirectly,\u00a0by drug abuse\u00a0(within the family and in the community at large) as well as by the terrifying\u00a0gun violence that is\u00a0never far from areas (of all races) where open-air, street-level dealing takes place.<\/p>\n<p>The story begins in the mid-aughts, with the family matriarch, Cheryl Sanford, visiting the house that used to belong to her father, and where she raised three children: her eldest Emmanuel, her middle child &#8220;Smurf,&#8221; and their sister younger sister Denise. It&#8217;s im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>tely apparent from Cheryl&#8217;s speech patterns, body language and facial discolorations that she&#8217;s a drug addict (we later learn that her drug of choice is cocaine, though it&#8217;s not the only substance she abuses), and the earliest flashbacks (circa 1999)\u00a0reveal that she&#8217;s been dealing with addiction her entire adult life. She blames herself for Smurf&#8217;s drug use as well as his decision to drop out of high school at 15 and start dealing. There&#8217;s a lot of self-blame and self-flagellation in this story, all of which was accumulated sincerely and in great distress but none of which ultimately means much in the face of the addiction and its collateral damage continuing over the course of decades.<\/p>\n<p>The movie&#8217;s introductory scene and subsequent, flash-forward-type allusions prepare you for the fact that something unimaginably horrible is going to happen to the Sanfords. When it does happen, it&#8217;s even worse than what you anticipated, and it proceeds so inevitably from the twin curses of drug addiction and gun violence that it feels almost as if we&#8217;re seeing a prophecy or curse fulfilled. A brief sequence of a family member cleaning up bloodstains\u2014literally a mess they&#8217;ve been stuck with\u2014is one of the most upsetting examples of life handing somebody a metaphor that you&#8217;ll ever see.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<section>\n<p>That&#8217;s all storytelling, of course; a magic trick done with images and sound. We know that in real life, people have addiction problems; that it continues over the generations. addiction being a genetic predisposition, not just proof of moral weakness or a bad upbringing; that\u00a0sometimes tragedy visits people&#8217;s homes randomly, shockingly,\u00a0without warning; and just because all\u00a0these bad things happened to one family, it\u00a0doesn&#8217;t mean that it was all somehow inevitable or inescapable or &#8220;foretold,&#8221; much less that the family &#8220;deserved&#8221;\u00a0it or &#8220;reaped what they sowed,&#8221; or\u00a0that the survivors can&#8217;t will a new path into existence if they push hard enough and catch a few breaks (which does happen for the Sanfords eventually, thank goodness, although it&#8217;s a long, hard road).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;17 Blocks&#8221; was\u00a0directed,\u00a0produced\u00a0and overseen\u00a0by documentarian and writer\u00a0Davy Rothbart, with a mighty assist\u00a0from editor-producer Jennifer\u00a0Tiexiera (whose &#8220;written by&#8221;\u00a0credit, unusual for a\u00a0nonfiction project, suggests that she took a strong\u00a0hand in shaping a coherent narrative from what\u00a0Rothbart says was over 1000 hours of raw\u00a0video). It&#8217;s impossible to oversell the mesmerizing nature of the images themselves. They&#8217;re consistently beautiful and moving without (usually) striving for prettiness. The\u00a0change in the\u00a0images&#8217; shape and resolution itself helps organically suggest\u00a0the passage (or slippage) of time from one era to the next, even when we aren&#8217;t seeing obvious indicators of maturation onscreen (such as changes in seasons, fashions, hairstyles or music).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to Rothbart, he met Emanuel and Smurf\u00a0Sanford in 1999 during a pickup basketball <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a> a few blocks from their house\u00a0and started hanging out at their house. After a certain point he started filming them\u00a0and leaving his camera at their house on weekends. Pretty soon the Sanford family was using it to document their own lives. The footage that&#8217;s been culled from that early, more-or-less amateur era is astonishing in its honesty and frankness, with the family (Emmanuel in particular)\u00a0treating it as essentially a diary or journaling notebook in the guise of a machine, a thing that could be switched on easily to record any moment, fleeting or momentous.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<section>\n<p>&#8220;17 Blocks&#8221;\u00a0probably doesn&#8217;t\u00a0push hard enough against reactionary, Puritan, possibly racist readings of the Sanford family&#8217;s misery as it should have, in order to guard it more righteously against bad faith interpretations\u2014including Cheryl&#8217;s own.\u00a0She\u00a0often seems to blame every awful thing that happens to her family on her addiction, and it isn&#8217;t until very late in the film that we learn that her addiction didn&#8217;t manifest itself out of the clear blue:\u00a0it seems very obviously a form of self-medication in reaction to having been gang-raped by a group of young men when she was barely adolescent. And one\u00a0of the movie&#8217;s virtues, its compactness, is often a liability.\u00a0It\u00a0divorces the family&#8217;s suffering\u00a0from\u00a0social and political context. Most of the time you\u00a0just have to infer the wider effects of racism, de facto segregation, financial &#8220;redlining,&#8221; and anonymous\u00a0military-style police occupations of Black neighborhoods (rumbling helicopters and flashing red-and-blue lights are a constant)\u00a0on\u00a0families like the Sanfords.\u00a0Steve James and Stanley\u00a0Nelson, to name just two filmmakers who often tell stories about Black families, manage to weave\u00a0all this into stories that are just as focused on feelings, so it&#8217;s not as if it&#8217;s impossible to pull off.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the whole, though, this is an engrossing and frequently extraordinary feature. At times it suggests a nonfiction, Black, inner-city answer to a sprawling, predominantly white\u00a0dramatic feature\u00a0like Richard Linkalter&#8217;s &#8220;Boyhood&#8221; or Terrence Malick&#8217;s &#8220;The Tree of Life,&#8221; where (via any means at their disposal) the filmmakers give you a sense not just of characters flowing through a river of time, but families struggling to make sense of changes that are happening all around them:\u00a0in communities, in households, and on their own faces when they look into mirrors, and at photographs. There are many affecting motifs in the film that have to do with the repetition of basic actions or conversations at different points in the family&#8217;s existence: for instance, a\u00a0mother or one of her children\u00a0commenting on her appearance in pictures from a different eras, or an adult asking a child to talk about what they want to be, or what they&#8217;re afraid of. There&#8217;s a subtle horror-film like aspect that will be familiar to anyone who been part of, or witness to, a family of many addicts: as soon as one generation gets old enough to start using\/abusing, the viewer starts worrying that the cycle is going to replicate itself again, because that&#8217;s how these things unfortunately tend to go.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the most wrenching footage in &#8220;17 Blocks&#8221; comes from the children and\/or Cheryl documenting the practical effect of drug addiction on their family:\u00a0the screaming fights between mom and the kids. or mom and her boyfriend; the boys\u00a0drinking and\u00a0smoking blunts in their mother&#8217;s house\u00a0when they&#8217;re still young enough to attend <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">movies<\/a> at &#8220;child&#8221; prices; mom crawling around on the carpet, seemingly looking for a lost stash. But the vast majority of the imagery simply depicts working-class, urban American\u00a0Black life in the late 20th and early 20th century, not in an exploitive or salacious way, but in a touchingly ordinary way: the hangouts and cookouts, the pranks and games, the meals and nightcaps,\u00a0the quiet moments where adults and children\u00a0are just sitting around thinking, listening to music, playing games,\u00a0napping.\u00a0The stuff of ordinary\u00a0life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<section>\n<p>Cheryl Sanford is listed as one of the executive producers on this movie, and her bio states that she&#8217;s been clean for a long time and is now a community activist and storyteller, among other things. The implication is that she wants us to see all of this, and that&#8217;s why she insisted that Rothbart and her own family members start recording it it all those years ago. That something this beautiful and honest came out of such suffering should give her some comfort, for whatever it&#8217;s worth. At least the story was told, and others can see it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<figure>\n<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Matt Zoller Seitz\" src=\"https:\/\/static.rogerebert.com\/uploads\/user\/primary_image\/matt-zoller-seitz\/featured_MZS_portraits-10.jpg\" title=\"Matt Zoller Seitz\"><\/img><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div><figcaption>\n<h5><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Matt_Zoller_Seitz\"><\/span>Matt Zoller Seitz<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h5>\n<p>Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large\u00a0of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<section> <\/section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"17 Blocks movie poster\" itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" src=\"https:\/\/static.rogerebert.com\/uploads\/movie\/movie_poster\/17-blocks-2021\/large_17-blocks-poster.jpg\" title=\"17 Blocks movie poster\"><\/img><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"17_Blocks_2021\"><\/span> 17 Blocks (2021) <span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p> 96 minutes <meta content=\"PT96M\" itemprop=\"duration\"><\/meta><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<section>\n<section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article target=\"_blank\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.rogerebert.com\/uploads\/blog_post\/primary_image\/streaming\/its-a-sin-hbo-tv-review\/thumb_its-a-sin-tv-review.jpg\"><\/img><\/p>\n<p> about 5 hours ago <\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<article target=\"_blank\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.rogerebert.com\/uploads\/blog_post\/primary_image\/features\/three-hour-brunch-friend-greta-gerwigs-breakups\/thumb_frances-ha.jpg\"><\/img><\/p>\n<p> about 5 hours ago <\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<article target=\"_blank\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.rogerebert.com\/uploads\/blog_post\/primary_image\/features\/getting-to-the-heart-of-america-in-david-lynchs-the-straight-story\/thumb_the-straight-story-feature.jpg\"><\/img><\/p>\n<p> 1 day ago <\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<article target=\"_blank\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.rogerebert.com\/uploads\/blog_post\/primary_image\/features\/bright-wall-dark-room-excerpt-gene-kelly\/thumb_bwdr-february.jpeg\"><\/img><\/p>\n<p> 2 days ago <\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-movies-tv-series\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch Movies &#038; TV Series <\/a>category<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/17-blocks-movie-review-2021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Watch 17 Blocks Online&#8221; &#8220;17 Blocks,&#8221; a documentary about twenty years in the life of a Washington, D.C. family affected by drugs and violence,\u00a0is such an emotionally punishing film that you might have to steel yourself\u00a0at\u00a0a couple of points to get through the roughest patches. This is by no means a knock against the quality&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[94282,94280,94281],"class_list":["post-183256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watch-movies-tv-seriess","tag-17-blocks-film-summary","tag-17-blocks-movie-review","tag-watch-17-blocks-online"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}