Netflix Monday: 'Happy Valley'

It's been one week since my oldest sister, Trisha, officially became a Penn State woman. It’s a distinction she joins alongside my brother Nate, a junior beginning in the fall, and several assorted family members mainly from my mother’s side. But as a proud OU student, I didn’t join their esteemed State College. Near their age, however, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't equally persuaded by this praised college town.

Growing up, Penn State was my number one school of choice. I never hesitated to say their name whenever people asked where I planned to go, and I wore their logos proud on various T-shirts and jackets growing up. Their enthusiasm was infectious. Their pride for their football team was inspiring. It was easy to see why someone would want to feel welcomed in a community acting more like a family than a university. But when I visited that small Pennsylvania town, I never really felt this warmth and comfort.

Something felt off. I didn’t feel alienated necessarily, but Happy Valley wasn't the home I thought it would be. I went to a football game, but didn’t ingest their rah-rah passion. I walked around town and seemed more confused than cozy, and based on the very short time I spent there I didn’t make any friends beyond those I already knew. In short, it wasn’t for me. Only when I visited OU did these stated attributions seem real for a college city. I did still apply for PSU, and got accepted into the university’s branch campus, but I decided to go with my new first choice instead. I couldn't shake these feelings when I watched Amir Bar-Lev's documentary Happy Valley.

Penn State’s descent into media scrutiny and smearing took place all primarily took place my freshman year of college, where I resided pleasantly in Athens, OH. At the time, I didn’t have anyone going to the college to get a first-person account of what was happening, so any information I received I gathered from the headlines and what my prided Nittany Lions-raised family members spouted. Still, a lot of the information in Happy Valley isn’t especially eye-opening to me.

What went down with Jerry Sandusky is all on record, and the worth of Joe Paterno’s legacy — and whether or not he deserves it after this information was revealed – remained a sticking point of ad nauseum conversations at several recent family gatherings. The most enlightening information told are personal accounts on both Paterno and Sandusky, unveiled by Joe’s widow, Sue, and their two grown children, Jay and Scott, as well as Jerry’s adopted son, Matt. Given the mildest of character depths, it’s clear nobody on screen-or-off denies Sandusky as being anything less than guilty of his crimes. Therefore, the overarching narrative of this documentary is spent evaluating Paterno’s personal stakes and responsibilities in the matter.

Is the man a disgrace or a legend? To Bar-Lev’s credit, his film does a fine job of letting the audience decide for themselves what to think of Paterno based on the information available and the figureheads speaking — including his biographer Joe Posnanski, local attorney Andrew Shubin and former student Tyler Estright. The primary drama in Happy Valley focuses not on the trail or the end of Paterno’s life quickly after his legacy was tarnished. Rather, it attempts to concentrate on the situation at hand after the trail, where the victims’ abuse is addressed in the form most fitting, all while still adhering to the man who gave his heart so readily to the town, its citizens and various students to make Penn State the beloved university it was at one time.

As an outsider, I’m still not particularly sure what to think of Penn State and their buffered legacy. I’m not going to pretend OU wasn’t without its controversies when I studied there, and it’s not my place to say what should have happened in this situation. Despite my family connections to the college, though, I’ve stayed fairly levelheaded about the entire scandal. Like everything in life, it’s not a cut-and-dry situation, and Bar-Lev decides its best not to get railed up in what should be done but rather in trying to remember what happened in the first place. It’s a respectfully handled movie, and it’s a remorseful and sullen one too.

It resonates because it’s not about the headlines but the people, and only when the movie decides to get into the thick of the controversy in the second half does it feel invested in the bigger picture. Happy Valley accomplishes a mere portion of its potential, and it’s only in these final moments when it feels just as haunting as it should be. It’s a heavy movie, though, but thankfully not a heavy-handed one, and Happy Valley should have been longer and meatier in its assessment of what happened.

The most fascinating segment is watching the two different sides interacting with one another. Penn State alum and Joe Paterno supporters engage in heated interactions with a civilian protesting near the Paterno statue, whose calling out the man honored with the metal figure and his supporters as “pedophile enablers," all while a plane flies overhead telling Penn State to take down the bronzed man as well. It gets down to what is actually being argued here, and this documentary sadly at times feels condensed only to some of the basics of the argument. Select people represent entire positions (Estright, Shubin) and only speaking for a select few in the process but are meant to speak for many. It feels too cut-and-dry, and there should have been more people here to address the different sides.

For there are a lot of variables to discuss here, and it’s a complicated matter with an impact that should still be felt. That’s not to say Happy Valley is anything less than shaking, though. Did we learn what we really needed to know from this situation? Bar-Lev’s dour ending suggests this isn’t the case, and even today it’s not particularly clear what Penn State facility, alum and students new and old take away from all this. And it’s hard for me not to keep this in mind when I see my sister start her college career in the town of the Nittany Lions. Bar-Lev gives a firmly guided assessment of the subject, one that’s particularly open-minded but not afraid to showcase either sides sympathies. And if anything, it’ll be an interesting conversation starter for several family meetings to come in the near future.

Image courtesy of Amazon