Big Brother reconnects with troubled 'Stevie' in vivid documentary

"I just don't know what it is about Stevie, but I love him," says Tonya Gregory, smiling shyly into documentarian Steve James' camera. Gregory, a sweet-natured woman with a severe speech impediment, is speaking of her fiancé, who's loved by almost nobody else: Stevie Fielding, a troubled young man who currently stands accused of a horrifying crime. Even Tonya thinks he's guilty, but stands by him as his downward spiral continues.

"Stevie" is a remarkable and profoundly sad experience — a journey into the life of an abused boy who grew up poor, uneducated and ultimately an abuser in rural Illinois. It's also an examination of one of life's most poignant questions: Are we our brothers' keepers? And it's a deeply personal film for James, who visibly struggles with his feelings of guilt and responsibility.

James, director of the acclaimed 1994 documentary "Hoop Dreams," was a Big Brother to Fielding in the early 1980s, when James was a college student. Stevie was then a preteen, a difficult but often-charming kid shuttled between his stepgrandmother Verna (his mother, Bernice, didn't want him) and foster homes.

Though James vowed to himself and his journal that he would keep in touch with Stevie despite his own move to Chicago, life intervened, and the two lost touch for 10 years.

Upon reconnecting with Stevie in 1995, James found a doughy, bitter troublemaker who looked much older than his 24 years. He'd been arrested a dozen times, lived in a filthy trailer and raged against his mother, whom he blamed for everything that had gone wrong in his life.

And upon James' next return in early 1997, Stevie was back in jail and accused of molesting his 8-year-old cousin. There was, it appeared, no happy ending for this story.

"Stevie," while in no way serving as an apology for Fielding (or for James), lets us walk in this family's shoes. We meet Brenda, Stevie's stepsister, who has largely escaped the cycle of abuse but nonetheless watches over Stevie even as he infuriates her. Verna, uncomfortable in front of the camera, expresses love for Stevie but will not acknowledge what he has done. Tonya, who at times seems a beacon of goodness in this often bleak film, stands by Stevie, reiterating her unshakable belief that people can change.

And Bernice, his long-estranged mother, reappears in the family circle, seeking to reconnect with her children but seemingly lacking the emotional warmth to do so.

But this film is about the two Steves at its center, painfully connected by shared history. There's little to like about Fielding, a man determined not to take responsibility for his actions, but "Stevie" shows us how he got that way. (In a heartbreaking scene late in the film, we meet the loving foster parents who might have been able to turn Stevie around, had life worked out differently.) And James opens his heart to the camera, as if making public the vow that he made privately to his journal 12 years ago. He will never forget Stevie, and neither will we.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com