I watched Limelight for the wrong reasons so I didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected. I thought that Limelight was going to be primarily about the titular club, the culture it produced and its patrons, but it was primarily about the rise and fall of Peter Gatien, the club owner.
Limelight has a tendency to be repetitive in foreshadowing Gatien’s legal troubles then showing the same clips when the documentary finally addresses them. Limelight included interviews with Michael Alig. I watched Party Monster, the documentary and the movie, so when I realized that Alig, one of the murderers who also dismembered Angel Melendez, was not only out of prison, but was offering his opinion on the legal system, I thought, “Screw that guy (Alig). I don’t care what he thinks except about his own life.” Limelight, the documentary, acts shocked and disgusted that their innocent (white) partying, i.e. orgies and illegal drugs, would suddenly be cracked down by the police after over a decade.
Limelight does an excellent job of juxtaposing their pearl clutching and “Who ME?” with the rise in stop and frisk, i.e. the constant harassment of the ones who partied at the club on Sundays, the hip-hop (black) crowd. Limelight misses the opportunity to dig deeper into that socioeconomic hypocrisy in the law and compare and contrast the NYPD’s actions at the same location with different patrons. Instead Limelight’s goal is to voice the outrage that Gatien is being treated worse than others when he was only found guilty of tax fraud–he can never enter the US again. Gatien’s daughter produced the film, and she got what she paid for. Limelight shows how other people who admitted to murder or drug trafficking never got prosecuted or treated as harshly as Gatien (‪#‎crimingwhilewhite‬). Sure it is unfair, but if you have enough money to tell your story, I care a little less about his story in comparison to the countless unnamed people who may have suffered similar indignities who don’t have the same resources. If Gatien had always tried to advocate for his patrons, which he was not obligated to do, and told his story, I would care more, but it isn’t so I don’t