Just, Melvin: Just Evil

James Ronald Whitney turns the camera on his own family. The subject is Melvin Just, who married his grandmother and abused the stepchildren of two marriages over many years. In 1979 he was convicted on twelve counts. The documentary follows the generations that came after, the drinking, the silence, and everything nobody in the family could say to anyone else. Whitney eventually sits down opposite Melvin and asks him; he denies all of it. The film chooses to let the survivors speak and never reduces them to the details of what was done to them. The subject is heavy and it is not easy to watch. It played at Sundance, then aired on HBO, and it shows without flinching how many generations this kind of harm can run through.