A scene from The Mind of Mark DeFriest (City Drive Entertainment Group)

Telling a story that could only transpire in our weirdest state, the new documentary The Mind of Mark DeFriest recounts the life and crimes of Florida handyman Mark DeFriest. In 1980 at the age of 19, DeFriest took possession of a set of tools willed to him by his deceased father. Unfortunately, DeFriest did not understand probate law, and took the tools before the property formally passed to him through the court system. In his mind, his dad left him his tools, so why couldn’t he just take them right away? DeFriest doesn’t have much of a mind or taste for the subtleties of modern life.

He’s something of a man out of time, born too late to fit into contemporary American society. One suspects he would have been far more comfortable living in the Old West. The beginning of the film describes what was probably the best time in his life, when he took his young wife with him on the road in his prized pickup truck without any money, only a set of tools. He would look for broken-down cars on the side of the road and fix whatever was wrong with their car, taking whatever cash the once-stranded felt he earned. Do a job, get a fistful of cash, and keep driving until you see the next job on the road in front of you—if DeFriest had his druthers, this was how the rest of his life would have gone.

During his initial four-year stretch in prison for the probate violation, DeFriest suffered severe abuse, as he was a naïve 20-year-old with blonde hair and blue eyes, a treasured commodity in that hellish environment. The documentary suggests that throwing a nonviolent offender like DeFriest in prison with hardened criminals ruined him psychologically for the rest of his life. His sentence kept being extended for such an absurd length of time because DeFriest, already an eccentric character, was deeply traumatized and unable to resist acting out and trying to escape. This is probably the most stirring, provocative aspect of the film, how the state punishes a man for having been traumatized by its own violence.

DeFriest has been in prison from 1980 till today. His “crime” only takes a few minutes to describe, and he hasn’t had much of a life since. This wouldn’t be too big an issue if he were a compelling interview subject, but that is not the case. The documentary spends plenty of time trying to get DeFriest’s thoughts on his predicament, but he seems unable to do much more than laugh it off as some sort of silly joke. He doesn’t seem outraged or devastated at having 34 years (and counting) of his life stolen from him by the machinations of the state. He doesn’t seem capable of taking his own life seriously, and the film struggles to find a way to make viewers take his life seriously, too.

To fill in the gaps, the film makes extensive use of animation to tell stories from DeFriest’s life, a technique that has worked well in recent works, like the documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story. However, this just contributes to the unreality and lightness of what could be a deeply impactful condemnation of state power.

The Mind of Mark DeFriest has the trappings of a tragedy, in its telling of how a life has been taken from a largely innocent man. But one gets the odd impression that he would have been more or less the same person, no matter his surroundings, as he appears to be the type of person for whom surroundings mean little. Not that he’s some kind of Zen philosopher, either.

Late in the film, DeFriest does express his desire to simply work an honest job and support his second wife, and he points to his gray hair as evidence of how he’s no longer capable of raising too much hell. This seems believable enough, but one somehow doubts if he’ll be able to keep from raising some kind of mischief in prison before his next appeal. He just seems fundamentally unable to go along with any kind of authority, which doesn’t make him a criminal necessarily, but it doesn’t help his chances to be granted dispensation either.

More compelling in its basic concept than in its execution, The Mind of Mark DeFriest is recommended to those who are strongly intrigued by the premise. But anyone looking for a contemporary The Thin Blue Line may be a bit disappointed. The lesson of his life is that there is a whole swath of people in this country who have not made the bargain of entering into mainstream American society, and make no attempt to do so. To them, the modern state is some bewildering thing, a preposterous leviathan that it’s best to steer clear from, as any interaction with it will end poorly for them.