The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) - Where were you 22nd July 1991?

Personally, I was very taken with Chris James Thompson's feature documentary The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, although reaction as a whole seems to have been somewhat mixed.  The film, which was originally screened at the 2012 South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas under the less precise title Jeff (Thompson was persuaded to change it after people showed up expecting a film about DJ Jazzy Jeff, among other famous Jeffreys), offers a glimpse into the hidden activities of the blond, bespectacled serial killer, who had been butchering young men in his apartment home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a number of years and building up a morbid collection of preserved body parts, and how it all came to be unraveled when he was finally arrested in 1991.  Dahmer's reputation was quickly cemented as one of the most notorious killers in US history (in no small part due to the harrowing intimacy he was compelled to assume with his victims' flesh after death, which included all manner of behaviours from necrophilia to cannibalism), so you can bet that numerous television documentaries, of varying degrees of worth, have been made about his macabre habits.  Thompson's film takes a rather unique approach in choosing to centre upon some of the individuals whose lives were affected in the aftermath of his arrest, and whose personal stories have often been muted or brushed over in earlier representations of the Dahmer story.  The Jeffrey Dahmer Files adopts a talking heads approach in allowing three individuals to recollect extensively upon their own personal connection to Jeffrey and what his arrest meant for them; a line-up consisting of medical examiner Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen, homicide detective Patrick Kennedy and neighbour Pamela Bass, each of whom has their own unique layer of perspective to add in trying to make sense of the kind of person that Jeffrey was, and of the complicated skid marks he left on their lives.

Straight off the bat, one criticism I've seen come up a few times is that the film does not actually tell us who any of these individuals are until right before the end-credits.  Well, I immediately think, surely any Jeffrey Dahmer buff worth their salt would already know who each of these people are?  After all, all three of them have been featured in previous documentaries about Dahmer, albeit in smaller, more heavily truncated chunks.  On the other hand, what Jeffrey Dahmer buff worth their salt isn't going to flip out at the film's depiction of his having resided in apartment 214?  Actually, I wouldn't even say that you'd have to be a "buff" to have known that Jeffrey's apartment number, while living at the Oxford Apartments on North 25th Street, was 213 - it's arguably one of the most well-known pieces of trivia about him.  It's such a glaring error, in fact, that I can only assume that it must have been deliberate - although I can't for the life of me think what would have motivated it. (Is it possible that someone in Thompson's crew was just really triskaidekaphobic and couldn't stand all that exposure to anything containing the number 13?)

Vexing errors aside, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files is clearly intended for those who've already done their homework on Dahmer and are looking to broaden their understanding of the story they already know.  If you're new to the Dahmer story and want a comprehensive overview of his life, misdeeds and eventual death behind bars, then you're going to have to look elsewhere.  The Jeffrey Dahmer Files focuses almost entirely on the events surrounding his arrest on 22nd July 1991 and the immediate and longer-term fall-out, both for the three featured individuals, all of whom were involved and impacted in some way (Detective Pat Kennedy interrogated Dahmer and managed to wangle a remarkably candid confession out of him, Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen had the unenviable task of having to go through the hidden boneyard at Apt. 213, while Pamela Bass overheard the confrontation between Dahmer and the arresting officers and later bore witness to the local community going to pieces as his secret activities became public knowledge), and in terms of the media frenzy that ensued when the sheer magnitude of the murders in question was revealed and tapped into the horror, disgust and lurid fascinations of a transfixed world.  Very little is revealed of Jeffrey's early life (eg: the acrimony between his parents, his childhood roadkill fixation), his family are referenced only in passing by Kennedy, and for the most part the film does not delve into the individual stories of his victims and how each of them fit into his drawn-out killing spree (although some attention is given to perhaps the most infamous of them all, fourteen-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, who managed to escape from Apt. 213 in a semi-conscious state, only to be returned there by a pair of Milwaukee police officers who accepted Dahmer's version of events over that of a group of eye-witnesses).  Also not included is any detailed explanation as to what the police who finally arrested Dahmer were doing at his apartment in the first place (and it was a total fluke, as Tracy Edwards, who led them there, had merely been seeking the keys to the handcuffs that Dahmer had put on him).  Likewise, there's very little speculation on the psychology behind Dahmer's crimes and what might have compelled him to murder so incessantly.  Truthfully, this is much less a documentary about Jeffrey himself than it is about the people around him and how, following the events of that fateful night on 22nd July 1991, their lives were never quite the same again.

Another common criticism I've seen leveled at Thompson's film is that if you are already well-versed in the story of Jeffrey Dahmer (as the film assumes that you are) then Thompson doesn't really bring anything radically new to the table.  And true, you're not going to learn of any particularly shocking or amazing new twists - as stated, the objective is concerned more with fleshing out what you already know, and providing a glimpse into what is was like to be present during the early uncovering of the case before it had the chance to make sensationalist headlines.  Certainly, I'd rate Thompson's film as being a good cut above your average television documentary on Dahmer, which will typically milk the horror factor for all its worth, often at the expense of the humanity of just about everyone involved (for one, I've never been terribly fond of the unsettling horror flick music a lot of them tend to feature non-stop, as if Dahmer actually emitted the danged music wherever he went).  The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, by contrast, endeavors to always keep a very restrained and decidedly human face upon the story - indeed, the entire purpose of the documentary, according to Thompson, was to give representation to the various human exchanges and experiences which were filtered out when the media began reporting the story to their own sensationalist ends.  Of particular interest in this regard is Kennedy's story, for he clearly enjoyed a rapport with Jeffrey which few others experienced, and which goes some way toward blurring the popular depiction of Dahmer as an inhuman monster as touted by various news media outlets.  Kennedy admits that the empathy he felt for Dahmer did not always sit easily with him, in part because of the incessant ribbing he endured from his work colleagues, but also because it prompted some serious soul-searching on his part as to what it was about his own life that enabled him to connect with Dahmer's.  It's also evident that the stresses of the case, particularly with all the public and media interest it garnered, took its toll upon Kennedy's personal life, bringing an end to what he admits was an already troubled marriage.  At the back of Kennedy's monologues is an understated parallel story regarding the disintegration of his home life, which sees him initially returning home to boast about his accomplishment to his horrified wife, and ends with him living in a one-room efficiency apartment downtown with no furniture and no phone line installed, unable even to contact his kids on his birthday.

Detective Patrick Kennedy

Kennedy (who sadly passed away in 2013 at age 59) has a very strong and likeable presence throughout the film - unflinching and assertive but also affable, earnest and down-to-earth, and very articulate in his descriptions of the initial crime scene (which he arrived at to find Jeffrey already subdued and a disheveled-looking police officer reeling from having taken a peak inside the suspect's refrigerator) and of the intricate interrogation process he went through with Dahmer.  Indeed, it's not hard to envision how that charisma might have seemed like a safe and welcoming haven for someone with all magnitude of sins weighing on their shoulders.  It took Dahmer a number of hours to begin to open up about his crimes (which Kennedy informs us is quite typical for a homicide interrogation), during which he and Kennedy spoke at great length about a number of other topics under the sun, including religion (Kennedy was a devout Catholic, while Dahmer came from a Lutheran background), alcoholism and Dahmer's job at the chocolate factory, and Dahmer would intermittently break down as the reality of his situation began to sink in.  Notably, throughout this time Kennedy did not have reason to believe that Dahmer was responsible for the deaths of any more than one victim (the head in the refrigerator, which belonged to Oliver Lacy), so when Dahmer began spilling his figurative guts on the long list of murders to his name, Kennedy was understandably overwhelmed and not sure quite how seriously he should be taking him.  Only when he had the opportunity to confer with a colleague and was brought up to speed with what had since been uncovered at Apt. 213 did Kennedy realise what he had just witnessed were not the ravings of an attention-seeking fantasist, but an intensely private individual coming clean for the very first time about a horrifying secret life which spanned back as far as thirteen years.

The first thing we hear out of Kennedy are musings upon the nature of courage, how everybody who joins the police force has dreams of acting heroically when faced with a dangerous situation, and an adage he recalls from his Catholic upbringing that "courage is simply fear that's said its prayers."  Noteworthy is that Kennedy was never, at any point, under any kind of threat from Dahmer, who was already handcuffed when he arrived at Apt. 213, although he does admit that the sight of the severed head in his refrigerator filled him with the overwhelming urge to bolt.  Doubtlessly, the Dahmer case would have been an unpleasant and trying experience to have to pour all of one's energies into, yet what's striking is that the specific courage displayed by Kennedy in his handling of the investigation is marked not by dramatic heroism of any kind, but by a more genial (albeit unconventional) kind of human connection, steadfast commitment and a willingness to withhold judgement.  He was capable of treating Dahmer with humanity, no matter how appalling the trail of murders he had to deal with.

At times the amiable nature of his relationship of Dahmer seems to contrast with the flurry of blaring, hysterical news reports which begin creeping their way in around the second half of the film, as this lifelong loner suddenly found himself at the centre of worldwide media attention (that the story would spiral into a media sensation is something that Dahmer himself appears to have anticipated all too well; immediately before launching into his confession, he advised Kennedy that his involvement in the case would make him famous).  Among the wealth of smaller, more subdued tidbits of information that surface throughout the film is one concerning the origin of the distinctive striped shirt worn by Dahmer at his initial court appearance, which was given to him by Kennedy, and had actually started life as an unwanted Xmas gift for Kennedy's son.  A bemused Kennedy recalls how onlookers pounced upon Dahmer's apparent choice of attire and made all kinds of speculation about his character on the basis of that shirt, which in actuality had been plucked from his son's wardrobe.

Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen

Not that there wasn't plenty of genuine horror for the media to sink its teeth into.  Jentzen's monologues frequently stand in a stark contrast to Kennedy's, as he reflects upon what was like to deal less with the man himself than with his gruesome handiwork.  Compared to Kennedy, he's more reserved and methodological in his recollections, considerably less animated and less prone to personal musings and anecdotes (although he does provide a pretty fascinating description of how decomposing bear paws are often mistaken for human hands).  Jentzen comments upon how unique it was, during the forensic investigation, to be able to feedback findings directly to the killer and get immediate confirmation on what had happened, but otherwise he has precious little to say about Jeffrey per se.  Instead, he focuses upon what was pulled out of various boxes and containers at Dahmer's apartment, the increasingly dour mood of the forensic examiners as they went about dismantling what Jentzen likens, soberly, to somebody's private museum, and the some of the hair-raising details that continued to surface as they trod deeper into the investigation (namely, Dahmer's deranged experimentation with drilling holes into the brains of some of his victims in an effort to zombify them).

Essentially, Jentzen's there to represent the cold facts of Dahmer's crimes, in as sensitive and non-sensational a way as possible, and to ensure that Kennedy's recollections over the man he connected with during the six week investigation period remain framed within that context.  One thing that Thompson's film does not go in for, for the most part, is onscreen gore - it manages to be extremely restrained in terms of how it handles the gruesome subject matter at the centre of the Dahmer case, and while Jentzen's testimony in particular leaves no doubt as to the grotesqueness of what was unearthed at Apt. 213, the gore itself is kept at a tasteful distance throughout.  The nastiest images that appear onscreen actually have nothing to do with Dahmer's crimes, but derive from a gratuitous snippet of footage showing a badly-bitten goldfish being used as live food for a tank of piranhas in a pet shop (which serves, one assumes, as an allegory for Dahmer's own insatiable predatory desires).  The camera doesn't linger on this footage for terribly long, but what we do see of that chewed-up goldfish more than oversteps the boundaries of comfortable viewing.

Pamela Bass

Finally there's Pamela Bass, the only interviewee who knew Dahmer prior to the events of 22nd July 1991, and as such had the difficult task of having to consolidate the "kindhearted" neighbour she had always known with the shocking stories that began pouring out in the aftermath of his arrest.  Bass describes how she went from initially assuming that Jeffrey had been set-up to freaking out about the possible contents of a sandwich she recalled having taken from him.  Bass's sandwich rant is another aspect of the film that I've seen reviewers picket at, chiefly because it seems like the kind of lurid, baseless gossip that would have filled more sensationalist coverage of the case.  Certainly, there is no evidence that Dahmer ever sought to have anyone else engage in his cannibalistic experiments, unwittingly or otherwise, but then I never got the impression that Thompson's film is looking to suggest anything to the contrary.  Given the context, I'm also not convinced that Bass herself truly believes it, or if she's just reeling off a list of thoughts and anxieties that played through her head when the full extent of Dahmer's activities began to sink in (and, to be fair to Bass, if I were to discover that my neighbour, from whom I'd accepted food in the past, was a cannibalistic serial killer, I suspect that my mind might wander a little in that direction too).  Largely, Bass describes how Dahmer's arrest affected her at the community-level, including the plethora of unwanted attention she subsequently received, both from the families of victims who saw her as culpable in Dahmer's activities (and whom Bass accepts as just wanting somebody to vent their rage upon) and from morbidly fascinated tourists who offered her money in exchange for being able to touch items which had previously been handled by Dahmer.  Bass also speaks about the emptiness of the newfound "celebrity" status that came with being the one-time neighbour of a convicted serial killer, and how Dahmer's notoriety continued to trail her no matter where she tried to go in life.  When, finally, the decision was made to tear down the apartment building (against the wishes of at least one tenant, as related in one of the film's more farcical anecdotes) and Bass had the opportunity to start again elsewhere, she recounts how quickly she found herself beleaguered by people wanting to talk to her solely in the hopes of gaining their own lurid Dahmer-related story to tell.  Whether or not you buy that Bass resented this attention half as much as she claims, there's a definite sense of irrevocability to her tales, of a world pondering if it can ever feel normal again having brushed up against the unthinkable.

Andrew Swant as Jeffrey Dahmer

As for Dahmer himself, he appears a few times in archival news footage (and also that family home movie where he talks about McDonalds cuisine which seems to show up in every documentary about him), but he's largely represented throughout the film in a series of dramatised sequences where he's played by actor Andrew Swant (actually one of Thompson's film-making buddies, and one of the guys responsible for this YouTube video you might have heard of).  We see Jeffrey, an avid aquarist, visit a pet shop, ride the Milwaukee buses, see his ophthalmologist, chow down on French fries and soak up can upon can of beer.  We also see him carry out ostensibly mundane activities which anyone already familiar with the story will recognise as having a more sinister purpose, including visiting a hardware store for the large blue barrel in which he used to store and liquefy the bodies of victims, purchasing ridiculous amounts of household bleach and talking to a pair of representatives from Eye In The Sky about getting a home security system installed.   You'll certainly require some background knowledge on Dahmer's life in order to make sense of a number of these - notably, his theft of a shop window mannequin, which is depicted here without context.  Other featured episodes include Jeffrey racing to a store to buy the large suitcase into which he stuffed the body of Steven Tuomi, and returning by Greyhound bus from a visit to Chicago with a prospective victim at his side.

This is another aspect of the film which I've seen draw criticism, perhaps because the presumed purpose of these sequences - to show that Dahmer was able to give the impression of living an entirely mundane existence while the reality was anything but - isn't that much of a revelation.  All the same, I think that giving Dahmer a corporeal presence throughout the film in his regular, pre-infamy habitat serves a useful purpose in providing a sense of the sheer everyday banality into which his grisly activities were inevitably interwoven, and the resulting portrait, of a solitary individual living among a community to which he felt no connection, is undeniably haunting.  My only real criticism is that Thompson doesn't appear to have been particularly stringent in ensuring that these sequences look authentic to the time period from which they supposedly hail.  I'm not quite obsessive enough to have (yet) trawled through all of the brands and logos featured during Jeffrey's shopping expedition to see how period-accurate they are, but there is a bit in which Jeffrey is seen prowling the Chicago gay pride parade where he picked up Matt Turner and you can clearly see someone snap the passing float on their smartphone (in 1991, you say?).

As noted, Jentzen does not describe having any real kind of personal relationship with Dahmer, but the other two interviewees round off their monologues by reflecting on the complicated, lingering emotions they were left with once they and Dahmer had gone their separate ways.  Kennedy recalls that Dahmer, having been sentenced to 957 years in prison, shook his hand as he was being led away and how, as he returned to his one-bedroom apartment later that evening, finding himself completely alone and with no furniture, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the finality of it all.  Although Dahmer's prediction that Kennedy's involvement in the case would bring him public recognition turned out to be entirely accurate (Kennedy recalls how random strangers were coming up to him and calling him "that Dahmer dude", and how staggering it was) there's a strange kind of irony in that Kennedy appears to have exited the story in much the same way that Dahmer came in - as a secluded figure shut off from the rest of the world in his efficiency apartment.  Despite Bass's understandable anger toward Dahmer, and her feelings that she, too, was a victim of his depravity, she reveals at the end of the film that she always retained some degree of humanity toward him.  She was upset by the news of his death in November 1994 (which came while Pamela was serving time in prison herself), and angered by the people around her who were openly rejoicing at the news.  Whereas most of the world only ever knew of Jeffrey Dahmer the monster, she could remember him as a human being, and her indignant insistence that "that was a life" serves as a reminder that a cold indifference toward life, however selectively, is not a trait simply limited to the killers among us.

The film ends with Jentzen (who's disclosed far less about how the case affected him on a personal level than the two other interviewees) revealing that his line of work has left him with no appetite for horror movies and that the last one he saw was The Exorcist (oh, the irony!) many years ago.  The last image we see, before the postscript, is of Swant's Dahmer perched upon a stone wall with a can of beer in hand, at once a deceivingly ordinary-looking man and the most deeply harrowing of figures; a total loner, cut off and adrift from the rest of society, his bland exterior merely accentuating the acutely haunting mystery as to what was lurking beneath those still and troubled waters.

To close off, here are a couple of great articles about the late Patrick Kennedy.  First, his obituary in the Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/news/obituaries/patrick-kennedy-made-a-surprise-connection-with-jeffrey-dahmer-bt9kgls-203865411.html

Secondly, an interview he gave regarding The Jeffrey Dahmer Files: http://www.westword.com/arts/former-detective-pat-kennedy-on-the-jeffrey-dahmer-files-5806572