Does the controversial documentary Leaving Neverland show a “lack of candor” about the protagonists of its narrative, Michael Jackson’s accusers? Slate‘s Christina Cauterucci argues that the film leaves out enough relevant facts to give skeptics of the accusations “room for their misgivings to grow.” Although motivated perhaps by a desire to protect the men who say Jackson sexually abused them as boys, the filmmaker’s strategy “actually does a grave disservice to both men.”
Jackson’s defenders are following an old script by attacking his accusers as greedy scammers, lying for money. Cauterucci recounts the details that make it impossible to reject those defenses peremptorily. Although the film handles some of the story’s complications with “admirable frankness,” in the end it never adequately confronts the weaknesses in the theoretical case against the performer — and thereby allows the entire saga to remain clouded with doubt.