Amanda Knox

Netflix

I was not a participant in the media savagery against Amanda Knox, because I find murder cases like these rather morbid and uninteresting. Because I went into this film as an impartial viewer, the facts laid out by the filmmakers were that much more illuminating. Without knowing about the strange antics of the media, who hounded Knox and reported false and disturbing details of the case, this is a simple tale of an investigation gone haywire.

 Amanda Knox comes off as a very likable and intelligent person. Many of the interviews she gives to the filmmakers show a likable, if eccentric,  young woman who didn't know how to act when she came home to find her roommate, Meredith Kercher, viciously murdered. Authorities had very little evidence to accuse the American foreign exchange student, but her strange antics at the crime scene (including kissing her boyfriend, slapping herself against the ears, and also having a breakdown while being interrogated by police) put them on her trail. Though these seem like awkward and unseemly actions for any person, Knox was dealing with hard to grasp emotions in the face of a heinous crime. Though many of us can't understand the strange irregularities in her demeanor, honestly can any of us say we could do better with suspicion towards our innocence looming in sight?

 Amanda Knox was imprisoned for four years, and her lover, Raffaele Sollecito was imprisoned for four years, six months of which was in solitary confinement. By the time she came home to Seattle half her twenties were wasted, and she had been barraged by horrible tabloid journalism. Some of the terrible things we learned from the documentary include the abusive interrogation techniques used against her, the police telling her she had tested positive for HIV/AIDS while imprisoned (which was an abject lie) and then leaking her diary to the press, and just how inappropriately the press handled the situation. It would be one thing for a trashy tabloid to print false information about a criminal case, but quite another thing for police to invent these lies and tell legitimate press, who publish without fact-checking because they want the scoop before others.

 Though everyone interviewed seemed to know that they were giving an interview for a documentary about Knox's innocence, their responses make them look guilty or negligence. The investigator's reasoning seems out of date and dangerous. The reporter looks like an impetuous muckraker. Everyone who isn't Amanda, the supposed sex maniac with a penchant for acting strange in tough situation, looks like a criminal themselves.