One Minute to Nine

A friend asked me to see this film at SXSW. I walked into the theater knowing nothing and she was right, the story is incredibly powerful. The way the story is told made me pay attention, and as the details of the Wendy's life came into focus I was shocked by the story. Following the film one member of the audience even mentioned that he had to go for a long walk. That about summed up my feelings. I wanted to feel bad for everything I had just seen, but I was left with some inkling of hope that things will be better. I have the utmost admiration for Wendy and total contempt at the deficiencies in our justice system. A great film about a very sad and common problem in today's society.

"Every f---ing day of my life," Wendy Maldonado told the 911 dispatcher when the woman asked how often did her husband hit or abused her. This call came almost immediately after Maldonado bludgeoned her husband Aaron's skull in with a hammer, aided by her seventeen-year-old son Randy, before his bloody carcass was picked up and transported to a hospital and Wendy taken away in handcuffs. Her murdering her husband, while costing her ten years in prison, was a release of twenty years of unconscionable, unforgivable violence and abuse that was not an irregular or infrequent occurrence, but an every day tribulation for the middle-aged mother of three boys. Every F---ing Day of My Life, the edited and re-cut version of a film called One Minute to Nine, aired on HBO in 2009 and told the story that was so often silenced in the wake of beatings and inconceivable torture.

Upon Wendy and Randy's arrest and subsequent acceptance of a plea bargain on manslaughter charges, with Randy arrested a week after Aaron's death, both souls were given four days before their sentencing hearing. Those four days are the focus of Tommy Davis's documentary, which is a collection of home movies revolving around what life was like in their Grants Pass, Oregon home. Wendy, who looks like any other woman you'd see in the supermarket or living on your block, details twenty years worth of trauma in just sixty minutes, showing us the grapefruit-sized holes in her walls, now concealed by drawings from her children, that were made by her head, bruises and cuts that were inflicted by her husband, and a wealth of broomsticks, knives, and flyswatters that were boxed away in the basement, out of reach from an unpredictably violent man of ostensibly no conscience.

Randy speaks on the incident through a phone in the jailhouse, behind a thick sheet of bulletproof glass. He states that he was ready to murder his father when his mother voiced her desire, which came only minutes before the bloody death. He states how he can recall several nights sleeping with his shoes on, atop his covers, not underneath them, waiting for something to happen that needed his immediate action. He even recalls him and his two younger brothers forced to sit on the couch as they watched their father kick, beat, and terrorize their mother, a reaction I couldn't even begin to fathom watching passively unfold, even as a young child.

A recurring moral of the documentary is the instillation of fear and helplessness. What made Wendy endure twenty years of abuse before finally acting, albeit in an extreme manner? She states that she could've ended it all ten years ago or even put up with it for another decade, but some impulsive instinct forced her to act and, in turn, bash her husband's brains in with a hammer one faithful evening, with the assistance of her older son. The act is recounted in horrifying detail, with gruesome crime scenes to boot, with both Randy and Wendy remarking how they saw Aaron hyperventilating and struggling to maintain irregular breathing after being struck so many times. When Wendy was being taken away by the police, she feared that her husband was still alive and that this incident would most definitely lead to a beating that she wouldn't survive. Sure enough, a coroner arrived and Aaron was pronounced dead soon after, an irreparable result to a drastic action that ended two decades worth of unjustifiable domestic violence.

Most films show domestic violence as momentary spouts of violence, often impulsive and quickly apologized for, even in the most sinister dramas. Here's a documentary that holds the issue up to a magnifying glass, forcing the viewer to reap at the ugliness and unfathomable cruelty of the situation. I'm reminded heavily of Frederick Wiseman's lengthy documentary Domestic Violence, which concerned a battered women's shelter in Florida, the victims, and the treatments the women underwent in order to try and better themselves. Here's a documentary that zeroes in on perhaps a unique situation; a neverending display of brutal violence towards an innocence person that was tolerated for twenty years before something was done.

However, at the end of the day, Wendy Maldonado and her son Randy are still killers, guilty of homicide, regardless of what the victim did to them or for how long he did what he did. Randy was eventually sentenced to six years with a release date set for August 2011, while Maldonado would serve ten years with a projected release date in March 2016. Upon being released from jail, I guarantee it will be the most liberating moment for Maldonado, if said moment hasn't already occurred.

Every F---ing Day of My Life is one of the most frightening documentaries I have yet to see. It's a film that reminds many of us that we don't know domestic violence outside of films, news articles, and soap operas, and shows the real physical and psychological ugliness that burdens these situations. I end with the simple, but imperative statement for all to simply respect and cherish the people in your lives because nobody deserves to go through this kind of insufferable pain.

NOTE: The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233; you know who you are.

Directed by: Tommy Harris.

I saw the HBO version with the changed title. My low rating does not reflect my lack of interest in the actual case itself. I wish 48 Hours made this instead of a pretentious filmmaker. THere is sadly, nothing new or strange about this case or the people involved that merits "a day in the life of" approach taken to showing the 4 days leading up to her sentencing and the past flashbacks. The doc starts off great showing anold eerie clip of the family at some carnival like setting.

We get thewhole picture of the dynamics and what life was and is like for these people in the first 15 minutes. Why is it deemed revelatory that the killers are ordinary good people? Showing the mother just go through the motions in those four days is a waste of my time and bores me. It is because we understand right away why she did what she did. We do not need to see boring footage to be convinced this is a normal woman.

They could have easily condensed the first 50 minutes into 15 minutes and spent more time exploring at least one or more of the following issues - why did the cops fail them, and why did such an indifferent system all of a sudden feel the need to extract justice now and sentence them to an inhumane amount of time in jail? Showing the judge mentioning that his hands were tied was not enough. There had to be some depiction of the defense team and why they failed the mother and son.

The blunt truth is this . This is a case that is sadly not uncommon in our society. The filmmaker taking a passive approach doesn't reveal to us anything that is educational or revelatory. What is of interest is how the system failed them before and after the murder. I would like to know what the defense attorneys said that did not convince her she didn't have a good chance of a better outcome? I would like to know why the DA was not persuaded to present a better deal.

I read that Davis had only a few days to shoot this before Wendy had to report to her sentencing, and with such a time constraint he managed to pull off one of the best documentary-film's I have seen in a while--even with only an hour of footage! Watching this brought some of the same feelings back I had from watching "Paradise Lost"--about the "West Memphis Three", except all of the facts were on the table here with Wendy's case. This creative piece really makes the people who say "well your the one who stays with the guy who beats you up--it's your fault!" feel like complete idiots. Audiences can now realize that so much is at stake when leaving an abusive man who is the father of your children. Especially a man (like this monster) who would still probably find and kill Wendy and her kids no matter what little restraining order was in place.

I love how the home videos were integrated with the whole film, It was mostly the home shots that really got to me.

The last documentary I saw was "Boy Interrupted", and this one is just as heart wrenching/touching.

**Side Note** Why would HBO change the name of this film!? One Minute to 9 is perfect! They probably think by adding a profane word that it would catch more audience attention...They are wrong, all you need to do is just see a couple seconds of the film to get hooked--like I did!

*Gave 9 stars because I wanted a little bit more of a back story...But that does not take away the fact that "One Minute to 9" will stay in your head for a long time after watching it!

One Minute to Nine had its North American Premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. The film tells the heartbreaking story of Wendy Maldonado and how decades of domestic abuse finally led her to kill her abusive husband. The film was well-received by an audience deeply sympathetic to her predicament.

The film is beautifully edited. The use of the family's home videos to supplement the 5-day footage with some historical background is powerful. The story that they tell is emotionally devastating, but it feels like half a story that raises more questions that it answers. Much more could have been done if they had chosen to interview the lawyers, the law enforcement officials, the judge, and experts of domestic violence to build a larger context around Wendy's specific case.

In some ways, the inherent drama of the story of Wendy and her children is more compelling and disturbing than the film Tommy Davis has made. Davis set out to make a film about how a family copes with the prospect that a loved one is being sent to prison in a few days. They apparently, almost accidentally, stumbled on Wendy Maldonado and her case which raises all sorts of legal and moral questions about domestic violence. They succeeded in telling that limited story that they set out to tell, but film doesn't seem to go far nearly far enough in exploring the societal implications of this tragedy which ultimately seems more important than the relatively narrow project that they present to the audience.

By telling her story they open up many important political, social and cultural questions, which they chose not to systematically address. Their narrow focus allows them to focus on the brief window of time leading up to her incarceration and the family history that led up to it, but they choose not to explore the deeper questions of the failure of the system that led up to this tragedy.

Why didn't the police arrest her husband for assault and domestic abuse during the proceeding 2 decades of abuse? Couldn't she have left him and sought a restraining order? Why didn't her family and friends help her to get out of this situation? Where were the social service agencies? Why did she get such a long prison sentence? What sort of legal representation did she have that advised her to take the plea bargain offered her? Is there an effort to get her a pardon or clemency? Decades after the "Burning Bed" made this sort of occurrence a national shame, how often does this still happen in the US and how can it be stopped?

While it is always easy to criticize documentary film makers for the film that they didn't make, in this case, the story cries out for a deeper examination and what they have done feels like it has opened up a door, but failed to walk through it. The film is compelling and important for what it shows us; however, it also feels narrow and unsatisfactory, because there is so much more that we need to know to try to understand the broader social and political implications of why Wendy is sitting in prison cell today.