The 1996 murder of 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey, a star of the beauty pageant circuit who was found dead in her family home on Christmas Eve, captivated the news for months. Even now, anything that is released about the crime still captures attention, decades after the brutal scene. Of course, we live in a world that capitalizes on the sensational, and there is no shortage of documentaries, films, talk shows, and more on the case, including anupcoming limited serieson Paramount+ starringMelissa McCarthyandClive Owen.One, though, stands out from its peers. Netflix’s 2017 documentaryCasting JonBenettakes a strange but purposeful approach to the notorious crime, breathing new life into the true-crime documentary genre.
‘Casting JonBenet’ Breathes New Life Into the Documentary
Casting JonBenetbegins withdirectorKitty Green, who didn’t want to make another docudrama or even a straightforward documentary on the tragedy. The Australian had one award-winning documentary to her name: the 2013 featureUkraine is Not a Brothel, a deep dive into the feminist protest group FEMEN, for which she picked up a number of AACTAs (the Australian Oscars), including Best Documentary Feature.
Her follow-up, the shortThe Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul, focuses on girls who were auditioning to play Oksana Baiul, Ukraine’s first Olympic gold-medal winning athlete following their 1991 independence from the former Soviet Union. The seven-minute film became the genesis of what would becomeCasting JonBenet.Green told Vox“There’s so many JonBenét Ramsey TV specials, with actors playing her mother and father. I’m always thinking, how do you play Patsy Ramsey if you don’t know if she’s guilty or innocent? How do you approach that role? I basically wanted to focus on the community.”In essence,Casting JonBenetputs the facts, as they are known, to the side in favor of documenting how the people of Boulder, Colorado, view the crime.
The People of Boulder Are Invested in ‘Casting JonBenet’
The first step to making the film was to put out a casting call, an open audition for any role in the Ramsey case, which Green did in and around the Boulder area. Once the hopefuls arrived,Green explained that the film wasn’t going to be what they were expecting, a dramatization of the case, but rather, as Green described it to Vox, an experiment of sorts. “Before we dressed them all up, I’d give them a 15-minute spiel about how I envisioned the film coming together,” Green stated, “Which is difficult, because it’s not like any other film, so it’s not really easy to describe!” She also made it clear that participants were told up front that the casting material itself would compose the bulk of the film she was making, and that anything said on camera could show up in the final cut; and much was said on camera, orallyandvisually.
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By opening auditions to those in Boulder, where JonBenét spent most of her short life,Green draws in people with an emotional investment in the tragedy, and the film captures the moments where the people share just how deep that investment is for them. For some, it’s as simple as having lived in the area at the time, remembering what it felt like to learn it happened in their own backyard. For others, the connection is on a deeper level, with people who have suffered great losses in their own lives and can relate to one or more of the players in the story.
The documentary also captures their speculations and theories about the events of that night and the people involved. Every player in the story is zeroed in on at one point or another as a guilty party, whether it’s the members of the Ramsey family themselves, or John Mark Karr, a pedophilewho falsely confessed to JonBenét’s murder.There are evenperipheral suspects like a Santa Clauswho had attended a party at the Ramsey’s and may have doubled back to climb through JonBenét’s bedroom window to take her life. As Green told in Vox. “I think a lot of them found it quite cathartic to talk about their own connection to [the case], or their experience with it, or their own impressions or presumptions.”
In ‘Casting JonBenet,’ Anything Is Plausible
Buckminster Fuller once said, “‘Reality’ should always be in quotations,” andCasting JonBenetis an exploration of that idea,capturing the conceptions and prejudices around the case and those caught in its sphere, and how it alters the perception of truth. Actors auditioning for the role of John Ramsey broadcast how much guilt they believe lies in JonBenét’s father in how they approach playing out the scene where her body is found, with reactions ranging from deep despair and wailing to crocodile tears. 10-year-old boys justifying their belief that her brother, Burke, played a bigger part by proving that he easily could have been capable of the act by smashing a watermelon to pieces with a large, blunt rod (it’s a rare moment of levity in the film, albeit incredibly dark).
All of this plays into turningCasting JonBenetinto something more honest and true than a big studio true-crime documentary had any right to be. With the complete absence of any definitive answers about her murder, any documentary offering a solution can only ever be speculative, until conclusive evidence deems it right or wrong. But what Green’s documentary does, by turning the focus on to how the crime is perceived by the hopeful actors, is, as Vox cleverly suggests, turn the murder into a “Schrödinger’s cat crime.“Because there are no conclusions, and how the crime played out is unknown, then every possibility, no matter how “out there” it may be, is plausible.
Casting JonBenetowns, and succeeds based on, that speculative aspect of the murder, a murder that the public can’t let go of. The murder itself becomes secondary in a documentary about it, as does the victim, who is mentioned only sparingly. However,asSuzanne Yazzie, a Patsy Ramsey hopeful, toldRolling Stone, “I felt like JonBenét was in the whole film, but you barely saw her. She haunted it.” Just like how she still haunts the people of Boulder and a public that won’t let her rest.
Casting JonBenet
Twenty years after the modern world’s most notorious child murder, the legacy of the crime and its impact are explored.
