The Dhamma Brothers

A sort of cross between "The Shawshank Redemption" and an episode of MSNBC's "Lockup," the intriguing documentary "The Dhamma Brothers" makes a cogent case for prisoner rehabilitation over, as one inmate here bluntly puts it, being "warehoused till you die." Directors Jenny Phillips, Andrew Kukura and Anne Marie Stein follow a group of convicts at Alabama's end-of-the-line Donaldson Correctional Facility, who, in 2002, participated in a 10-day course of Vipasanna, a strict, silent form of Buddhist meditation.
The contradiction between the peaceful tenets of this Eastern protocol versus the violent world of the prisoners, many of whom are convicted killers, fuels the film with both fierce irony and dark hope.
The documentary features interviews with a quartet of prisoners so emotionally transformed by meditation they can now recall their heinous crimes with a powerful honesty and clarity. But it's lifer Grady Bankhead who trumps all when he asserts the rigorous Vipasanna retreat was harder than his eight years spent on death row.
Da The Los Angeles Times, 9 maggio 2008