Review of Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill Rating **** 1/2
This documentary tells the story of a shooting involving two equestrians – one a trainer and the other his student. I’m not a phycologist. But I am willing to go out on a limb and diagnose the shooter in this story as a narcissist. The worst kind of narcissist are the ones who have power over others. They are overly sensitive to criticism. They declare all-out war against their perceived enemies. They believe themselves to be smarter and better than everyone else. Michael Barisone fits that description.
Every story has two sides, and the filmmakers let the main participants Michael Barisone, a former Olympian dressage competitor, and Lauren Kanarik, a student of Michael’s, tell their side of the story. Each has documentary evidence to back up their claims of who was in the wrong: audio recordings, social media posts, and 911 calls. Everything comes to a climax when Michael Barisone decides that the only solution to the conflict is for him to kill Lauren. What makes his decision even worse than it is, is the fact that he wrongly believed that Lauren had accused him of child abuse. That apparently was the triggering event.
Seems like a pretty clear-cut case of attempted murder. Fortunately, Lauren survived the shooting. But Michael hires an attorney who decides that the crime was one involving temporary insanity. Throughout the trial, Michael looks very much like a broken man who is still suffering from some kind of mental episode. At one point in the film the filmmakers suggest that Michael was coached and was putting on an act for the jurors. His attorney, Ed Bilinkas, gets defensive and looks into the camera, and denies the claim with a stark “F you”.
There are several things that point to the possibility that the whole “look how crazy I am” was an act. The first deals with how he was presented to the jury. Ed Bilinkas tells viewers that he is the best at what he does. So, does that mean you never talked to your client about what to wear during his court appearance? You’re that good but somehow neglected this part? He wasn’t wearing a suit jacket. He was disheveled. He continuously made crazy expressions throughout the trial. You’re telling me that you had no input in any of that? There is a telling point in the trial where the whole crazy act falls apart. It is a brief moment where Michael, who looks as though he is in another realm and has no idea what’s going on, writes a note to his attorney. You can see the change in his demeanor. Another indicator that it was all an act involved the prosecution’s expert witness who claimed that when he interviewed Michael after the shooting, he was well groomed and did not have the disheveled appearance he had in court.
I won’t say that it was all an act. The narcissism in Michael would have caused him to unravel. His identity, as well as his life, was on the line. There was genuine anxiety on display in that courtroom. I won’t give away the verdict. I will say that had I been on the jury, I would have voted guilty. At one point in the trial Ed Balinkas gets in front of the jury and, referring to the derogatory social media posts by Lauren, decries “who would do something like this.” The prosecutor, rightly tells the jury that MIchael Barisone and his girlfriend, Mary Haskins, were doing the exact same thing to Lauren.
I would have liked to have heard from at least one juror. It is obvious by how long it took for the jury to return a verdict that it was not a unanimous decision at first. There had to have been some debate. There was some text at the end of the film that updated viewers on the case, but the text was so small and appeared for such a short amount of time, that it was impossible to read. The one thing I was able to gather was that Michael Barisone received a lifetime ban from competing in the sport.
I saw this on Netflix.