The director of Citizen Penn, a film that shows the actor’s reparative work in Haiti, argues that people need to leave their preconceptions aside
There are two Sean Penns, and we each decide which one’s real based on our own political leanings and overall cynicism. There’s the attention-hogging Penn, a self-important blowhard hypocrite leveraging his celebrity to affect the appearance of a selfless do-gooder while enjoying a life of fabulous luxury on his own time. And there’s the activist Penn, a workhorse putting in the effort to separate himself from the A-listers merely posturing as Mother-Teresas-in-training, who talks a big game about changing the world but won’t hesitate to put his money where his occasionally foot-shaped mouth is. In the new documentary Citizen Penn, director Don Hardy isn’t particularly interested in promoting one image of the actor-director over the other. He’d rather let the footage of devastation and recuperation in Haiti do that for him. Though Penn may have provided the household name required to get a low-budget non-fiction project such as this one off the ground, the man himself isn’t the subject as much as his deeds, and the legacy of public aid he’s created.
Related: Citizen Penn review –
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