MOVE was a self-styled revolutionary African-American group that took root in Philadelphia in the 1970s and had frequent run-ins with the police.
MOVE members, as depicted in Jason Osder’s harrowing documentary, weren’t an especially sympathetic lot. They tore up sidewalks and spat profane tirades at their blue-collar black neighbors over a loudspeaker. The children of MOVE are shown naked and unkempt, with bodies that indicate malnutrition from their haphazard raw-food diet.
But the ultimate solution, if you can call it that, of Philadelphia authorities was to evict MOVE via thousands of rounds of ammunition, and to drop a military-style incendiary device on the group’s headquarters. The resulting fire of the title burned alive five of those children and six adults, and destroyed 61 homes.
That was in 1985. Osder composes his film solely from footage of the fire, the years leading up to it and the investigations immediately after. Stripped of any long-term self-justification, people such as police brass, surviving MOVE members, neighbors and politicians are shown as they were when decisions and consequences were staring them in the face.
The closing subtitle says that no one was ever prosecuted for this madness. The pure-archive approach leaves a taste of despair; civic governance, it seems, can’t even promise not to kill you.