Movies

‘American Promise’ remains largely unfulfilled

In the mountain range of New York City’s exclusive private schools, if the Dalton School isn’t Mount Everest, it’s pretty darn close. For their sprawling documentary, directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson filmed their son Idris and his friend Seun Summers — at home, at Dalton, with friends — over all 12 years of their pre-college education, asking whether prestigious start equals bright future.

Both Idris and Seun are African-American, while Dalton is about 75 percent white. The movie spends a lot of time with the question of how much the boys’ challenges are magnified because they are black.

Idris went to Dalton all the way through; Seun, diagnosed as dyslexic, struggled, and finally transferred to a nearly all-black high school in Brooklyn.

It’s a baggy movie, with some things (such as whether Idris taking Ritalin in high school improved his performance) unexplained, and it may appeal most to those raising kids themselves. By the end, the loving, fretful parents seem less mysterious than their sons.