Review: ‘Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop’ on HBO

Thought Crimes: The Case Of The Cannibal Cop
Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop Gilberto Valle and his mother, Elizabeth Valle, in this documentary about his case, Monday on HBO. Credit HBO




“He’s not a cannibal,” the accused man’s mother says. “He never ate anyone. Isn’t that the true definition of a cannibal, is someone that eats human meat?”

That head-spinning statement — and let’s note again that it’s the defendant’s mother saying it — sums up “Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop,” a documentary set for Monday night on HBO that is a trip down the rabbit hole if ever there was one.

It revisits a notorious case that is still evolving, the one in which a New York City police officer named Gilberto Valle was accused of planning to kidnap women, then cook and eat them. What makes the case doubly bizarre is that at the heart of the preposterous-sounding charges are serious and sobering issues: Is it illegal to think vile thoughts and chat about them on the Internet? Where is the line between sadistic fantasizing and imminent crime?

The film’s director, Erin Lee Carr, gains the confidence of Mr. Valle, who gives his side of the case that began when his wife found startlingly gruesome chats on his computer. Mr. Valle’s mother, Elizabeth Valle, also opens up, as does his father, Gilberto Sr., though to a lesser extent. These interviews enhance the arguments familiar from Mr. Valle’s trial — that his chats on a fetishist website were only fantasy, that arresting people on the basis of such things is a foray into a thought-police state.

The film, though, is no knee-jerk defense of Mr. Valle’s right to talk about trussing up women like livestock and making centerpieces out of their heads. Ms. Carr (whose father was David Carr, the media columnist for The New York Times, who died in February) sprinkles the film with excerpts from Mr. Valle’s chats, which are appalling even if they are merely fantasies. She also gives voice to all sides in the debate over the implications of the case, not just the free-speech one.

“The idea that everything that happens on the Internet is fantasy and it’s not really real is dangerous,” says Laurie Penny, a journalist who writes for The Guardian. “It’s just another way of not wanting to confront the fact that these evil thoughts and behaviors exist within human beings. It’s not a product of technology or possession by the devil or any kind of outside force. It comes from us. The darkness comes from us.”

In 2013 a jury convicted Mr. Valle of conspiracy to kidnap, but a judge later overturned that conviction. Mr. Valle hoped that might be the end of the case, but Ms. Carr follows him as he gets word that prosecutors decided to appeal. That appeal is pending.

The case, of course, has been irresistible to certain elements of the New York news media, spawning garish, pun-filled headlines. Ms. Carr isn’t immune to the cheekiness. For instance, James A. Cohen, a Fordham Law School professor, is discussing the tension between allowing freedom of thought and preventing crime.

“How are you going to feel if you let him off and he goes out and eats somebody?” he says. And Ms. Carr cuts immediately to a shot of Mr. Valle stirring a simmering pot of something goulashy-looking.

But the cheap shots are few and far between; for the most part, this absorbing film stays focused on the substantive issues raised by the lurid case. A bit more discussion of the broader implications would have been welcome. How do the arguments supporting Mr. Valle’s right to fantasize apply if the discussion is about, say, abhorrent images of children, or about terrorism?

Plenty more will no doubt be said on these and related subjects as the age of the Internet and electronic eavesdropping progresses. Consider “Thought Crimes” a primer for the century ahead.