"Stevie" and the helplessness of helping

DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER STEVE James ("Hoop Dreams") returns to the southern Illinois town where he once volunteered as a Big Brother a troubled youth, Stevie. But Stevie has not found his way in life. He has a failed marriage, a string of arrests, and stands accused of child molestation.

"Stevie" is about the frustrations of being unable to help someone. We meet Stevie's mother, grandmother, girlfriend, sister, friends, neighbors, and former mentors, all of whom have tried in some way to shape him. Steve James, who becomes a character in his own film, carries a lot of this kind of weight: What if he had done more? As one of the interviewees says, "What do you do when the village fails" at raising its children?

At the same time, as we get to know Stevie, he becomes more fully known to us than as a mere charity case or a statistic. And we begin to sense the effect of living every day with a cadre of people trying to change him: He seems more and more alone, less willing to trust an extended hand. "I ain't going to no shrink," he says, even if it means more jail time. It's clear that isolation and punishment is, for Stevie, preferrable to letting a stranger get close to him.

In my own life, I've lived on both sides of this tension: wanting help other people and yet resenting help myself. I am sure that most of us have a better idea of how our parents or siblings or friends or enemies might live their lives, and yet of course we resist their own interference in our own lives. I can feel myself in the shoes of both Steves: "Why won't you accept my help?" and "Why are there strings attached to your affection?" These conflicting sentiments stand as a roadblock in relationships.

Not too long ago I was sharing with my boss and mentor my frustrations at not being able to convince someone of a certain point I felt was important. And he told me that I had handed him a complete answer to the problem, to be swallowed whole or to be rejected. People, he said, all want to discover an answer for ourselves.

As I think back over the great friendships in my life, I realized he was correct. They walked beside me, challenged me, loved me, sought with me, but never dictated to me. The books and movies that are important to me have spurred me on to discover things about the human condition, but rarely handed me a conclusion. Maybe what we need most is just some gas in our tanks, some push to keep going, rather than someone taking over the steering wheel. Maybe helping someone isn't telling them what they need or even giving them what they need, but allowing them to discover what they need -- which might not be what we suggest anyway.

I do not want to give the impression that I know what Steve James should have done, nor dismiss Stevie's culpability. There are no easy answers to the movie's open-ended questions about what can be done about crime and abuse in our world. But I think the director makes a good observation when, at one point, he says Stevie has become more of a subject matter than a person. Taking to wearing sunglasses indoors, Stevie seems to sense this. Not many of us bring a film crew to our friendships, but the same kind of psychological distance is present when we constantly evaluate the other person. We can sense when our friend is truly listening to us ... and when there are strings attached.