Building A Home For A Client Who Can't Live In It
The fantasy structure, as interpreted by Sumell, doesn't exactly have a Crescent City vibe. From the outside, it suggests Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie style. In one of the movie's most interesting sequences, several architects argue that the interior reveals another influence: prison.
Although Wallace was released from solitary — temporarily — while the movie was being made, he never made his way in front of Bhalla's camera. He's heard only on the phone, or through an elaborate system of screens at Angola.
Yet he emerges as a vivid and remarkably sanguine character. He's candid about the crime that put him behind bars, and understanding when his supporters on the outside don't always put his interests first. At one point, he insists that Sumell pay more attention to her ailing mother than to him.
The artist accepts that order, but she's headstrong to the point of obsessiveness. One biographical detail is telling: As an adolescent, Sumell was the first girl on Long Island to join an organized tackle-football team. And a single comment establishes her political outlook: She calls the 2000 presidential election "the coup."
The contrasting demeanors of its two main characters give Herman's House its spark, but the movie has some pungent moments without them. At Sumell's gallery opening, for example, upscale New Yorkers chat and sip cocktails in the scale model of Wallace's cell.
If the movie is finally a little frustrating, that's because events failed to cooperate. Commendably, Bhalla followed Wallace and Sumell for several years. But neither's story came to a resolution before the filmmaker stopped shooting.
Herman's House would benefit from more background material on Wallace, notably about the alleged weakness of the murder rap against him. In the end, though, neither Sumell nor the film is concerned with that. Their goal is to make palpable — and palpably horrific — the fact of living 23 hours a day in caged isolation. Even those opening-night cocktail drinkers must have noticed that a 6-by-8 cell is soul-crushingly small.