The Public

A brutal cold snap hits Cincinnati, the shelters run out of beds, and a group of homeless regulars at the public library refuse to leave at closing time. Stuart, a librarian, decides to stay with them rather than clear them out, and by morning the building is the lead item on the news. Emilio Estevez wrote, directed and stars. The idea came from a real piece of writing: an essay published in 2007 by Chip Ward, a librarian retiring in Salt Lake City, on how libraries had become de facto homeless shelters and librarians de facto social workers. It took Estevez twelve years from reading it to making this. The problem is the pulpit. Characters occasionally deliver positions instead of speech, the media and prosecutor figures are drawn flat, and the ending abandons realism for a symbolic gesture. For all that, it is genuinely good on what a library is for as a public space. Who it is for: American issue dramas with a heart on the sleeve. Who it is not for: viewers who want the message left implicit.