The House I Live In

2012 "The war on drugs has never been about drugs."
7.9| 1h50m| NR| en
Details

In the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer, and destroyed impoverished communities at home and abroad. Yet drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong?

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Also starring Eugene Jarecki

Reviews

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.
SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.
Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.
valis1949 THE HOUSE I LIVE IN (dir. Eugene Jarecki) America has more of its citizens behind bars than in any other nation on the planet, and we presently have more Blacks incarcerated than were slaves in the Confederate States of America during the 1850's. And, America's misguided approach to the issue of illegal drugs is the single most important reason why so many of us are in prison. These are only a couple of startling revelations from Eugene Jarecki's riveting documentary about America's terribly misguided War On Drugs. Clearly we have chosen to solve a health issue by creating a ridiculous legal and political policy based on an oxymoron called, 'the criminal justice system'. Racial scapegoating and a system based on 'prisons for profit' have allowed us to spend billions, yet more people use illegal drugs today than when the drug war first began. And, the quality of these drugs is infinitely superior. No one, not the authorities or the criminals, seem to be satisfied with the status quo, and readily admit that the whole affair is an abject failure. But, the film shows how this suicidal social policy remains locked in place with no end in sight. Politicians campaign on making this nation drug free, and addiction rates soar and we can't seem to build jails quickly enough to fill them.If there was ever a solution that was immeasurably worse than the problem, it is The War On Drugs. ABSOLUTE MUST SEE
peacecreep Eugene Jarecki's frightening and important film is a thorough investigation of the prison industrial complex and the "war on drugs" i.e. the war on poor people. It's a fair and balanced look at how it subsidizes thousands of jobs and locks up millions of innocent people. Unfortunately he misses a key argument against this war: adults should have the right to sovereignty over their consciousness. Drugs are slightly demonized throughout- the fact that the drugs themselves are inherently good- its people with no self control that give them a bad name- is never explored. Regardless, this is a fascinating look into a sick society in a dead and deadening country. Recommended.
RainDogJr Cinema and literature have explored the themes of THE HOUSE I LIVE IN many times before. If you talk about "war on drugs" you'll inevitably find that everything is related, from the kid who wants to follow the steps of the most recognized gangster in the ghetto (something similar to one of the stories in Garrone's GOMORRA) to the penal system debate (not long ago Werner Herzog touched this theme with INTO THE ABYSS). THE HOUSE I LIVE IN, documentary about the war on drugs in the United States, take us to many states, shows us the perspective of all the involved in this complex situation, from the recluse that trafficked with methamphetamines to the cop that appeared in the series COPS. Even when the documentary's duration is only 2 hours, it seems that director Eugene Jarecki had enough material for a 10-hour miniseries, so with a single viewing it may be a bit difficult to retain every one of the stories here featured. Jarecki began his project thanks to a personal issue: the African American woman that took care of him when he was a child saw her family being destroyed by drugs. The director quickly delimitates his theme and decides only to explore his country – the Mexican war on drugs, for instance, is mentioned only once, simply to conclude that the problem is much bigger in the United States. Jarecki never questions where the drugs that enter to his country come from, or why people use them – that's somewhat clear: people involved in the drug traffic or use do it "out of pain", as one of the interviewed persons remarks. So, the objective of the documentary is to find out what causes that pain. We get concise answers and thoughts, that shows an impressive brutality and at the same time contradict the final message, sort-of encouraging, of the film. That message is, by the way, illustrated with the image of an African American woman watching on her TV, with a smile, the first victory of Barack Obama back in 2008. Yes, the same woman that took care of young Jarecki. THE WIRE (2002-2008), brilliant but not very popular American series, has been described as a cop show that doesn't move fast, with tons of action and gunshots. The series' big amount of information can be a little difficult to digest at the beginning, but we are talking of an ambitious project that starts with a simple detective case and ends exploring many aspects of the American society (in Baltimore specifically), being the drug trafficking one that stands out. One of the interviewed persons with more presence in the documentary is actually David Simon, former police journalist for the Baltimore Sun and also creator of the mentioned TV series. Undoubtedly, Simon was a huge inspiration for Jarecki, and both works, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN and THE WIRE, complement each other. If you know the fiction, watching the documentary is like returning to the same places (the housing projects) and also to some situations (the cops that prefer doing quick drug-related arrests rather than working on bigger, more important cases). Another person that stands out is one historian with an expertise on Abraham Lincoln. With his look from those civil war years, this man take us by hand to give a look to the history of drugs in the United States, going till the days when the Chinese people (who were directly related with the use of opium) began to took the jobs of the white Americans. The stock footage shows us the classic American propaganda, and Jarecki finds some answers and parallelisms in the type of political speech that was used by someone like Nixon. Like I already mentioned, the principal virtue of THE HOUSE I LIVE IN is that it provide us concise answers – even a theme like the origin of the ghettos is explained better than ever. In fact, this Lincoln look-alike man is who concludes in a brutal way the war on drugs theme, and more than Jarecki's own sort-of conclusion, this is the one that will stay with us – the war on drugs is an holocaust that, unlike the other holocausts, has evolved and no longer distinguish races, only social classes. *Watched it on 16 February, 2013
zippyflynn2 What's really fueling this law and order hysteria and the draconian prison sentences for relatively minor, innocuous and even non-existent "crimes" is the extraordinarily profitable Prison for Profit system. What's interesting and extremely frightening is most Americans are oblivious to it. Combine this with a large number of the public being largely uneducated and on a continual sadistic hunt for scapegoats, those who profiteer on the modern day slave trade have a willing public as unwitting accomplices.It's interesting the director, Eugene Jarecki, also did "Why We Fight", one of the best documentaries to expose the crimes being committed by the blood money Military Industrial Complex. The public is also largely oblivious to that evil profiteering monster and also happily supports it to the point it thinks murdering and dying for it is a good thing. Jarecki makes some of the most important and enlightening documentaries of today. It's an alarming shame and tragedy that the predominately ignorant and not very mentally healthy general public aren't watching them, let alone able to comprehend how it hurts everyone except the bank accounts of sociopathic "business" men and women.Perhaps the common denominator is the same fuel that's driving half of the present day voters in the Presidential election: hatred and the eternal search for scapegoats. It would make an excellent documentary to tie these core driving forces together, a task I think Mr. Jarecki is capable of doing well. It probably won't make much of an impact beyond preaching to the choir but then again none of his other fine offerings have fared much better and those are still greatly appreciated by thoughtful and humane audiences.