---

The waiting is the hardest part. In Time, a new documentary from Garrett Bradley, the sentiment becomes an understatement. The movie follows the efforts of Fox Rich, a car-sales entrepreneur based in Shreveport, La., to get her husband, Robert, an early release from prison. In 1997, the couple was involved in a bank robbery — something Rich plainly states was born out of financial desperation. The latter was sentenced to 12 years but only served three. Robert, however, is on track to be incarcerated for a total of 60.

The feature shows the impact it has taken on the Rich family (it oscillates, in subplot style, between Fox and Robert’s sons, who have either mostly known or never known anything but this wait) and Fox’s tireless commitment to ensuring her husband does not have to complete his full sentence. She’s shown constantly petitioning over the phone for his freedom; she has in the years since her release become a lauded public speaker, making the rounds educating the public on the perils of incarceration and how cruel and unusual it is, particularly toward Black men.

Unless someone in your immediate circle has been incarcerated, what exactly the ramifications can feel like to those secondarily affected can remain foreign. Time, shot in unvarnished black and white and clocking at just 81 minutes, gives its central plight three-dimensionality and immediacy. Bradley incorporates home videos shot over the years from the family to drill in just how long this endless-feeling nightmare has been part of its life. “Time is what you make of it. Time is unbiased. Time is lost. Time flies,” one of Robert and Fox’s sons, Justus, says in an almost self-soothing chant style before offering, almost tired of optimism, “This situation has just been a long time, a really long time.” 

Fox tells us that every year since her release, she thinks to herself on New Year’s that this year will be the one where Robert is finally going to come home. She notes that even if you know deep down that this is going to prove to be a lie told to oneself to keep pushing, it still gets you somewhere. Time speaks to a larger issue often discussed in clinical rather than intimate terms; it renders it immediately personal. The movie features a cheer-inducing finale. But the breakthrough seen through comes in the wake of so much damage that you think, concurrent to your elation, how many people in a situation like the Riches do not get or simply never got this “happy ending.” And how it’s not even really a happy ending — one can be optimistic about what’s on the horizon, but there is no way, really, to remedy the pain of losing so much precious time.