The Laramie Project HBO Home Video     Reviewed by Tony Buchsbaum	When Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998, what began as a small-town episode of extreme gay bashing suddenly became a lightning rod. A tidal wave of national response followed the case, from the days we waited for Matthew's expected death to the trials, months later, of the two local boys who killed him. In the process, our collective horror that such a thing could happen became a debate about how it could be allowed to happen -- especially in such a bucolic place as Laramie, with its open plains, distant mountains and soothing breezes. The Laramie Project was the opening night feature presentation at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and it was broadcast on HBO soon after. The newly-released DVD includes the film in widescreen format, two featurettes, a director commentary track and a making-of documentary. An ensemble piece created and directed by Moisés Kaufman, Laramie chronicles the Shepard case starting on the night he was beaten, bound to a remote fence and left for dead. Rather than a reenactment of those events -- the "character" of Matthew Shepard does not appear in the film -- The Laramie Project is a group testimony that explores the night of the event and the massive reverberations it set off, upsetting what might be called the careful balance of the debate about homosexuality and hate crimes in Laramie and throughout the United States. The film is based on months of what must have been intense interviews with the people of Laramie, who are portrayed by actors like Steve Buscemi, Camryn Manheim, Amy Madigan, Christina Ricci, Peter Fonda, Ben Foster, Jeremy Davies, Terry Kinney, Laura Linney and Frances Sternhagen. Each of them, filmed with stark, natural light, with apparently no makeup or artifice of any kind, brings raw emotion to their characters, putting a true ensemble of near-destruction in the limelight. At moments you forget they're actors, their intensity is dialed up so high. Through short snips of intercut footage, the events relating to the case are reconstructed, as told from the various points of view of the people who knew (or at least knew of) Matthew. Though the story itself is consistent -- there's no question about the chain of events -- it also has a taste of Rashomon to it. In that film, director Akira Kurosawa presents one story told by several different people, and the drama arises from the differences in their stories. Here, there is a similar kaleidoscopic effect, with each voice telling one sliver of the same story. The end result isn't one of confusion, as you might expect, but one of clarity. By focusing these 20 or so voices and faces, which look worn and tired and sad and western, on one event works like a bright like shined on a suspect at a police interrogation. "Where were you the night of the 13th?" That sort of thing. It feels nervous, twitchy, unsure, and above all, real. Though presented as a narrative film, it's fair to say that The Laramie Project is a documentary -- albeit with a difference. In a documentary, the performers are the actual people involved in the story. Here, those people are portrayed by actors -- but all of their dialogue is taken from those months of interviews. Apparently, nothing here has been invented or written; it has only been artfully arranged and, if you will, recast. During the months when the national news organizations pointed their cameras at Laramie, the people there clearly felt under-the-gun, as if the nation held them all responsible for the crime. The point is made again and again that Laramie is a place where the common mantra is "live and let live," despite this singular evidence to the contrary. Another, more powerful point is made that Laramie doesn't grow children that way (that is, homicidally homophobic); the speaker revises herself right away, admitting that what happened makes it clear that in Laramie they do in fact make children that way. When she speaks the words, her voice is laced with fear, loathing and sorrow. In a way, she emerges as the voice of the film. As a mother, she has a certain perspective about child-rearing and the realities of the world that make the whole event somehow even more horrifying. There's something in her eyes, in all the actors' eyes, that brings the tragedy of Matthew Shepard into sharp, unblinking, unforgiving focus. | July 2002   Tony Buchsbaum is the author of Total Eclipse. At night he works on another novel and a screenplay. Days, he writes advertising copy in Lawrenceville, NJ, where he lives with his wife and sons.	The end result isn't one of confusion, as you might expect, but one of clarity. By focusing these 20 or so voices and faces, which look worn and tired and sad and western, on one event works like a bright like shined on a suspect at a police interrogation.