A word can be worth a thousand pictures. In the movie “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer,” the word “snip” describes what the camera, demonstrating the eloquence of reticence, does not show in gory detail: Kermit Gosnell’s use of scissors to cut the spinal cords of hundreds of babies that survived his late-term abortion procedures.
Directed by actor Nick Searcy (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “The Shape of Water”), this gripping true-crime courtroom drama, with dialogue taken from court transcripts and police records, made it onto 670 screens, and earned nearly $4 million, and soon will be available in DVD format through Netflix. This, in spite of impediments from portions of America’s cultural apparatus that are reflexively hostile to examining Gosnell’s career in infanticide.
The movie’s makers tried to raise money on a crowdfunding website that balked at graphic — meaning accurate — descriptions of the subject, because “we are a broad website used by millions of people.” However, a pluckier site gathered $2.4 million from 30,000 contributors. Almost all regular critics of movies were offered copies of the movie. A major film will receive about 270 media reviews, according to Mark Joseph, CEO of MJM Entertainment Group. “Gosnell” received 12, even though in the October week it was released it was the top grossing independent film and cracked the top 10 of all films in theaters. The critics’ boycott of the film continued the journalists’ indifference toward Gosnell’s trial.
As the prosecutors drove to the courthouse in 2013 for the first day of Gosnell’s trial on eight counts of murder (a woman who died following an abortion procedure, and seven snipped babies) and 24 felony counts of abortion beyond Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit, they anticipated a difficult maelstrom of media attention. They encountered something worse: virtually no attention. In spite of — actually, because of — its gruesome substance, the two-month trial, which ended with Gosnell sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, was not covered until, by their example, a few journalists embarrassed others into paying attention.
