Catfish
Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
2010
Because this is the first thing everyone wants to know: No, I don’t think this is real. There are people who range from believing the entire thing, to thinking that it might have started out real but the filmmakers caught on to what was going on waaaay before they appear to in the movie, to people who think the whole thing is fake. I’m one of the people who thinks the whole thing is fake.
BUT: the fact that that’s what everyone wonders about, and the fact that I feel like I have to say that, means that the movie accomplished exactly what it wanted to. This is a really terrific study of the blurred lines between reality and fabrication, and whether it even matters, ultimately, what’s true and what isn’t (it doesn’t). That’s what the movie is about on the surface, and what it’s about below the surface. The genius of Catfish is that it makes us experience that confusion and doubt as we’re watching a movie about the same thing. We live the things the movie is “about.” That’s really pretty brilliant.
I love that things go in a completely unexpected direction late in the film. What we expect to be some kind of “twist” ends up being kind of sweet– creepy, yes, but still kind of sweet– and much more about human frailty than we ever would have thought from the first two-thirds of what we see. That’s fantastic drama.
As I’ve often said, I don’t generally care what’s real and what’s not in a movie like this. If it rings “true” emotionally, then what does it matter what “really” happened? Which part is real, anyway? The “facts” or the feelings? When Werner Herzog fabricates scenes in documentaries, it’s in pursuit of what he calls “ecstatic truth.” They aren’t lies if they serve to create an emotional truth. I don’t know any of these people anyway, so all I have is what’s on screen. Shouldn’t that be enough?
Fletch
Jeremy
Zack!
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