It wasn't my fault that the young girl died.

Ruth 2022-01-28 08:20:47

Cowardly, cowardly. Can commit atrocities.

Doing things that violate morality recklessly, but always find excuses and retreats for themselves in a humble heart.

It wasn't my fault that the girl died, Gertrude said. I have no money, my husband ran away and my daughter was pregnant, my house is full of noisy children, I cry every day with the child of my lover who just wants my money, I am addicted to syrup, I sometimes feel like I am sick. I'm not wrong, the family has only had a bad influence since she came in. I taught her a lesson, I did my part.

The eldest daughter, Paula, said it wasn't my fault that the girl died. My boyfriend didn't love me, and I was unlucky to get pregnant at a young age. Yes, I panicked, and made my mother's prejudice against her deeper, and she was ravaged by my lies, but she leaked my secret first, and I just wanted to teach her a lesson.

The other children in the family said it was not our fault that the girl died. We are mother's children, and we should do whatever our mother asks us to do. We don't know why we go to abuse her together, or why we like to watch other people abuse her as well. We just listened to mother's arrangement, we are all just children.

Sylvia's sister said it wasn't my fault that the girl died. Although that girl is my sister. Although she was first beaten to take my share. But I was threatened and I couldn't do anything. So I could sleep with the other kids in the house with peace of mind, and I could watch my dying sister abuse my dying sister time and time again, and it was like a circus. Who called me my sister, she volunteered to take up my share first. And I also said sorry.

Others who came to the basement to join the abuse said it wasn't our fault that the girl died. We don't know why we beat her, mocked her, tortured her. We are invited, we are not cowards.


The neighbor who lived next door said that it was not our fault that the girl died. We shouldn't have been nosy.


Sylvia's parents said it wasn't our fault that the girl died. Although she is our flesh and blood. We never expected things to turn out this way, we had to, it's not that we didn't care about the kids, we just didn't know it.


God said it wasn't my fault that the girl died. I'm just too busy.





I spit on the faces of each of them in the film, they are hateful and pathetic, ignorant and humble. A beautiful girl like a flower, became the victim of their bad life.

The girls pleading, moaning powerlessly, and screaming and screaming, will only become the notes of their lives in the end. Some people hear pain, some people hear joy, and some people don't hear it at all.

Why can such long-term atrocities continue? Is the evil maintaining? It is the convention of the whole public that they depend on sadism, so that they never say a word to the outside world, and are content with the whole absurdity of brutality. Does the pleasure of abusing and humiliating others frighten them?

In the end, the girl was still dead, shoveled by a belt, scalded by cigarette butts, stuffed with a Coke bottle, beaten and abused, dehydrated and starved, branded and scratched, she was locked up to watch, she was The protagonist of their sick circus. In the end, she was dead, and they were all alive. The Last Judgment is only for moral comfort.


When human nature peels away piece by piece from evil, the buds that remain in the deepest part are not good, but nothing. Good and evil are intertwined and never opposed. Strip away the evil part, and the good also falls off.

And the dead Sylvia is the flower of the superworld that has not been infected by evil. Maybe it was because she didn't have evil that she couldn't save herself. Can a child without evil be able to survive in this world of evil desires?

View more about An American Crime reviews

Extended Reading
  • Clay 2022-01-28 08:20:47

    The event itself is extremely shocking. Catherine Keener's performance is really wonderful, but the narrative angle is very gentle. The display of the evil of human nature is weak, and it does not mention the impact on legislation.

  • Retta 2022-03-19 09:01:10

    So calm and self-dressing so well-deserved brutality, so direct and indifferent enough to personally participate in the connivance of evil, making such a film based on real events pale enough to leave only criticism, just like in the film. Like neighbors who don't care about them. This flower of evil is blooming too coquettishly, I can't tell if it's too real or too fake!

An American Crime quotes

  • Gertrude Baniszewski: There are things in life we have to do, whether we like it or not.

  • Leroy K. New: Are you scared?

    Gertrude Baniszewski: I've been scared about a lot of things for a long time.