AMANDA
KNOX
Amanda Knox is a Netflix documentary about the murder of an exchange student named Meredith Kercher in Italy. (SUMMARY)
The documentary begins with police footage of the actual murder on the first of November, 2007. There's audio from the police calls, as well as commentary from the police officer who took the footage that day. After a minute or so, we hear Amanda's voice. We hear her question her innocence before we see her, to which she then says "if I'm guilty, it means that I am the ultimate figure to fear because I am not the obvious one. But on the other hand, if I'm innocent, that means that everyone's vulnerable. And that's everyone's nightmare. Either I'm a psychopath in sheep's clothing, or I'm you". I think that this is a really interesting way to start the documentary. The audience doesn't learn whether or not she was found to be guilty, we just know that she was convicted of a brutal murder. This beginning draws the audience in, we want to know her story and we want to know if we should be afraid of her or be afraid with her. The credit scene used clips from interviews she was in, which already shows how insensitive the public becomes when dealing with a suspect of a murder trial. Interviewers were asking her about her sexual activity in Italy, asking her how she was "strange". After this opening scene, we jump to 2016, or "present" time. We watch Amanda making dinner for a while before she beings her interview. She began by discussing how she saw herself, that she was quirky and weird and that was okay. However, from the interviews shown in the credit sequence, the audience already knows that her fun personality was construed to be some kind of psychopathic trait. She describes how wonderful her first few weeks in Italy were, before everything went downhill. The way that they progressed the story was play by play, there was no jumping around. The audience is then introduced to Amanda's boyfriend in Italy, Raffaele. They had only been together for about a week before the murder took place. We learn through the British journalist who reported on the story, that the Italian police thought that perhaps the murder was a sex game gone wrong- which now connects to why the interviewers on television were asking her about her sexual activity. Through Amanda's interview and the police call that Raffaele made to the police, the audience learns that Amanda and Raffaele never saw the body before the police did. The police officer then begins talking about how they choose a suspect, such as how Meredith's body was covered with a blanket. Only a female would cover another female's body, a male would not think to do that. The break-in was also staged, as Meredith's room was on the second story and there was no evidence of anyone climbing up the wall to break her window. Raffaele then twists his story, stating that Amanda told him to lie and that she wasn't at his apartment until 1am. At one point, Amanda started crying, which was shown in the interview. This gave viewers an emotional connection with Amanda. When the media was searching for things to twist the story into, they found poor images of Amanda and Raffaele, nicknames that could be construed to be evil. It shows how fake and mean the media is.
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This is a Netflix-made documentary, which means that they have a lot of money to get both great directors of photography and great equipment. All the interviews are performed in the same place, with a variety of camera angles. I'm learning, from experience, that multiple camera angles are truly the best thing to use. This way, you don't have to find b-roll to cover every cut but just change the angle. During the credit sequence, there are photos of Amanda and videos of a variety of interviews she had to be in during the trial sequence, all are in black and white and set up the premise of why she was a suspect in this trial. The b-roll they did have was absolutely gorgeous, both in color and in quality. They had a lot of home videos taken by Amanda and her sister, footage of Meredith pre-death, televised interviews, as well as some footage of Italy/homemade b-roll (picture of the "travel sheet" for Italy) obviously taken by Netflix themselves. The first interview that as not in English was the lead prosecutor who worked the case in Italy. Over his interview, they used b-roll of the crime scene, presumably photos that he or one of his coworkers took. I thought it was also cool that they intertwined Raffaele's interview with Amanda's interview. Together, they told the story of what happened on the day of the murder since they were together for a majority of the time. When Amanda's mom came to visit, they only had the prison audio recording. To lay under this, they took beautiful footage of a prison meeting office for prisoners and visitors.
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The music is powerful. It sounds very similar to a lot of other murder documentaries, it has that mysterious and dark vibe.
I would definitely recommend this film (I even told you that I loved it on Friday!)