Let the Fire Burn (***3/4)

Anyone who lived in the Philadelphia area in the mid-1980s will remember the police confrontation with the radical group MOVE on May 13, 1985, that resulted in the deaths of eleven group members, including children, and an out-of-control fire that destroyed multiple city blocks in the West Philly neighborhood. Those who don’t remember may find even more bewildering the sequence of events that resulted in such a calamity. This documentary tells the story extremely well using, exclusively, period footage, primarily local news coverage, film of the hearings held by the city in the months after the confrontation, and the videotaped deposition of thirteen-year-old Michael Moses Ward, who had been living in MOVE house with his mother and survived the conflagration.

Told sequentially, the film provides some of the history of MOVE (not an acronym), which formed in the early 1970s. Under the guidance of spiritual leader John Africa (whose followers adopted the same last name), the group espoused an anti-authority, pro-self sufficiency philosophy and rejected most modern technology, though not autos. To many people, they just seemed dirty and odd. To their neighbors, they were a nuisance. To the police, they represented a threat, and a 1978 confrontation with the group left one officer dead, one MOVE member beaten on camera, and the MOVE “compound” destroyed.

After that, the group relocated to a row house where the 1985 confrontation took place. The last two thirds of the film recount that fateful event, interspersing the news footage with the later testimony in a way that seems as clear as possible and fair to all sides. Today, the MOVE fiasco is a symbol of a decade when the city had reached a low point. It’s still possible to argue about the extent MOVE was to blame and how the city should have handled the group and the plan to evict it from the West Philly row house. It’s unclear what lessons are to be drawn from it. Still, watching it occur is like watching a suspense thriller, albeit a depressing one.

A sad footnote that occurred after the film was complete was the death of Ward, also known as Birdie Africa, in September 2013.

IMDb link

viewed 11/7/13 7:30 pm at Ritz Bourse and posted 11/7/13