The Imposter (Bart Layton, 2012)

One of the unfortunate truths about American movie audiences is that they just aren't going to go to the multiplex to see a documentary. Anyone making a documentary film has to resign themselves to the fact that they are therefore attempting to reach a smaller audience than your average narrative film. Among the many reasons that's unfortunate is that films like The Imposter exist. They are documentaries, and they can provide the same degree of suspense and skillful storytelling that any narrative can provide, and as importantly, they are generally concerned with presenting a much more realistic perspective on things that do or have actually happened or existed in the real world. They aren't works of fantasy by their very nature.

To that end, if it weren't already relatively well publicized and easy to research, I don't think the majority of audiences would believe that The Imposter is actually a real story. It's too weird to be real, and too strange to be fiction, but it's true. There are points in the film that would be impossible to believe if it weren't being relayed by the people who are actually at the center of the story. All of the major players in the events the film is depicting are interviewed in the course of the revelation of the story. It not only gives the story credibility, it also adds to the sense of suspense and it adds to the power of the final destination on the journey the film is guiding the audience on.

The Imposter is the story of Frédéric Bourdin, a twenty three year old French citizen who impersonated a missing child from a small town in Texas, and the family who took him in under the auspices that he was their missing child. It's a compelling, shocking and brilliantly told tale about the nature of identity, trust, belief, desire, and perspective. 

Thunder Soul (Mark Landsman, 2010)

Let's get one thing out of the way. If you have ever remotely enjoyed documentaries, you should see Thunder Soul immediately. There are only a handful of reasons that a person shouldn't see this film, and all of them have more to do with self righteous than they actually do with the quality of this film or the story it has to tell.

With that out of the way, let's move on. Thunder Soul is the story the Kashmere High School Band, and the reunion that would become Kashmere High School Alumni Band, and their band leader, Conrad "Prof" Johnson. They became the best high school band in the country, and one of the best funk bands in the country, high school, amateur, professional or otherwise.

The great thing about Thunder Soul is that it isn't the kind of cloyingly sweet feel good tripe that so many documentaries of it's ilk become. Is it "feel good"? Absolutely. Does it have something positive to say about it's subjects and their experience? Yes. What it doesn't do is reach for some kind of overarching metaphor about the human condition and beat the audience with some kind of positivist message. It tells the story of these people, the context in which the events it portrays take place and it always lets them speak for themselves. In that way, it becomes something the viewer can digest in their own time, and in many ways, find their own meaning in. There's a whole lot that can be culled from the experience and actions of the Kashmere High School Alumni Band, but it's up to the audience to decide what exactly about those things are most worthy of being given that time and thought. Mark Landsman has enough respect for both his subjects and his audience to leave all of that up to them.

Without doubt, this is one of the most vibrant and human music documentaries I've ever seen. Because it's not weighed down with trying to debunk or uphold a band or scene that is already enshrined in the popular imagination, it has no need to deal with the kind of sensationalism that is unfortunately is a part of the music industry to such a degree that very few music documentaries are able to tell a complete story about their subjects without contending with it. It's a warm film, without shearing off the warts of the subjects in order to present some fantasized ideal that could never exist.

This is going to be one of the shortest reviews I've ever posted. The reason for that being, that so long as you don't find good funk music offensive somehow (and I'm hoping that the number of people who still fall in that category is infinitesimal at this point), there's absolutely nothing about this doc to dislike. It's a vibrant film, celebrating the art of musicianship, community, education, and the kind of disciplined hard work that comes with doing anything as well as this band played funk music. More than being worth the time it took to watch it, I felt I didn't want it to end, which is an extremely rare quality for a documentary.  If you have any taste for documentary film, see this one A.S.A.P.

Cropsey (Barbara Brancaccio, Joshua Zeman; 2009)

The most famous documentary relating to a wrongful prosecution is The Thin Blue Line. Errol Morris' 1988 documentary was responsible for a man being released from death row for a crime that he had been convicted of through a combination of overzealous prosecution and poor police work. It's not only a masterpiece of the documentary film genre, but a strong example of the degree to which the combination of film and journalism can actually do something important. Wrongful convictions, especially those which involve a sentence of either life in prison or death, can force a society to question even it's most basic assumptions of justice.

Cropsey, is a film that journeys into similar territory. It begins with what was a local legend for Staten Island, New York. The legend gives the film it's name. It begins with Willowbrook State School. Willowbrook has a storied history, beyond Staten Island that reaches into the history of the treatment of mental illness and the treatment of the disabled. Beginning in 1965, outcry over the treatment of patients in Willowbrook became a centerpiece of a movement to change the way that people with disabilities and mental illness were treated. Willowbrook State School was held up as the example of what shouldn't have ever been done, and what should never be done again. Footage from inside Willowbrook, even for someone who has spent a lifetime delving into every nook and cranny of the strange world of horror fiction in all of it's incarnations, is among the most disturbing things I've ever seen. It's terrifying, heartbreaking, and really lives up to the fullness of the word nightmarish.

In Staten Island, an urban legend had grown, and children were told to stay away from the old ground of Willowbrook, and the park that surrounded it, especially at night. They'd be told that Cropsey would come to get them. Cropsey was supposed to be either a former patient or orderly of Willowbrook that had returned there and would be waiting for unsuspecting children.

The film makers Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman both grew up in Staten Island, and even as they'd grown up in different parts of the borough, and hadn't known each other as children, they'd both been told the story repeatedly. They'd both made the obligatory pilgrimages to Willowbrook, searching for whatever it is children search for in the dark places whose storied histories frighten them. The film begins with that urban legend and then it takes on the real life events that were the basis of that legend.

As the story unfolds, a story of missing children and a community near crazed with grief and fear, it doesn't becomes more and more convoluted and confusing, instead of becoming clearer. Most of it deals with the question of guilt as it relates to the man who was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of many of the children who'd gone missing, and the story veers back and forth from seeming to point to the man as guilty at some points, and at others to suggest he might be innocent and that the actual killer may still be free. The film makers have done exhaustive work finding as many of the witnesses and participants in the searches and the investigation and covering every aspect of the case as possible. A few different theories end up coming to the surface, and being that the case took place during the Eighties, the obligatory Satanic cult theory show is suggested and was apparently even believed to be the main motive by a number of police, despite the fact that it began with a local preacher who claimed to have visions of children being sacrificed on altars. To their credit, the film makers present this as just as much a part of the original case as any other part, because at the time, it would have been, and even in the present day, there are still a number of people who seem to believe it's the real explanation and motive for the kidnappings and murders.

Cropsey really touches on that childhood fear of the stories we're told about monsters hiding in closets or under the bed. It also does a great job of making it perfectly clear just how the disappearances and the murders effected the community. Beyond all of that though, it touches on something incredibly interesting and that is important in a larger context. It touches on the way that facts and legends can start to become intermixed. It also touches on the lengths people will go to in order to create some sense of understanding the truly horrible and tragic aspects of life. The way the stories began to intertwine as facts and suspicions became almost interchangeable presents a picture almost as frightening as the disappearances and murders themselves, given the possibilities inherent in a community turning it's focus away from what it can prove to what it believes.

This is an extremely well made and deeply compassionate documentary that deals with some of the more horrifying aspects of humanity in an empathetic way that isn't demanding judgment, but is just trying as hard as it can to understand as well as it can. The result, really, becomes a film that pulls in many different topics and ideas and through that empathy never seems as if it's sloppy, reaching or ill advised or stepping over the line into sensationalism. It's a great example of how approaching a documentary with the right prospective is more important than the budget it has or just how slickly produced it is. I'd stack this up against any of the documentaries by the industries most recognizable names any day.