Blink

In the opening scene, we see a man paging through a psychology text, pointing out various serial killers and other poster boys for aberrant psychological behavior before coming, eventually, to a picture of himself: Gregory Withrow, former white supremacist leader. Elizabeth Thompson's often powerful, occasionally over-stylized, and--at times--maddeningly elliptic documentary combines commentary from Withrow and a handful of acquaintances together with archival news stories and talk show appearances from the late '80s when Withrow was, first, the leader of a college "white student union" (whose purported mission of protecting the rights and interests of disenfranchised white students was a thinly veiled front for a white supremacist group closely allied with Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance movement), and later, a reformed penitent whose flight from his former cohorts resulted in his being beaten and "crucified," with his hands nailed to a board. Although one interviewee questions the veracity of Withrow's crucifixion story (a challenge which the filmmaker never takes up with Withrow himself), viewers are asked to pretty much take Withrow's version of his life's events on faith (from a defining childhood incident of being told by his father to punch a young black playmate who was in the yard, to his gradual conversion with the help of a lover named Sylvia)--an objective frame of mind that isn't always easy to maintain in the face of such odd, fawning sequences as a repetitious MTV-like clip of Withrow swinging a sword slo-mo Conan-style in a field. Still, even if it doesn't always succeed on the level of biographical narrative, this PBS-aired P.O.V. entry does offer a compelling glimpse into the psychology of hate and the insidious power of groupthink, while at the same time underscoring the fact that people can and do change...sometimes for the better. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)