by Francis Friel

Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack has been the subject of some very weird scrutiny since it debuted at Sundance earlier this year (where it won the Grand Jury Prize). Questions about exactly when and where and how Moselle met the Angulo brothers, the six imprisoned filmmaker siblings at the center of the film, have been hounding the film since day one. And while a lot of the questions seem to have some merit to them, and I had questions of my own while watching the film, I’m inclined to give all this stuff a pass, because this is simply one of the best movies out there to deal with outsider artists on their own turf.

Bhagavan, Govinda, Naryana, Mukunda, Krsna, and Jagadisa lived together in their four-bedroom Lower East Side apartment for fourteen years with their mother, father, and younger sister. Going out only a few times a year (some years not at all), they got the majority of their life experience through watching movies and, as they got older, taping their own shot-for-shot remakes of their favorites. We see entire rooms of the apartment filled with movie props and scripts and costumes. They sit and meticulously type out their own scripts of films like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and The Dark Knight Rises by freeze-framing the movies with the subtitles on. And they are genuinely good actors (or mimics, at least). Listening to them speak candidly, the transformation into their characters in their films is pretty extraordinary. They’re not the same people.

They’re incredibly resourceful, too. They build detailed Batman and Bane costumes by painting cut-up cereal boxes and taping them together. They make their own props using the same process, including handguns and machine guns (the apartment at one point is raided by the ATF, where their “weapons” stash is discovered, the agents complimenting them on how life-like the props are).

On one level, obviously, it all plays out like a real-life cross between Be Kind Rewind and Dogtooth (I wonder if they’ve seen those films?). The deeper level, of course, is that this is a documentary. The reality of the situation is that their father has imprisoned the family in this tiny apartment (they’re home-schooled by their mother, a certified teacher). It’s explained that their father, Oscar, is so paranoid (he would say he is enlightened) about the outside world being a dangerous place that he has done this to ensure the safety of his children and to allow them to focus on becoming who they really are free from the influence of a corrupt society that will only lead the kids to a life of drugs and violence. I was reminded of The Devil’s Playground several times throughout the film. Coming from the sheltered life that has been forced upon them, they inevitably act out and create their own insular culture amongst themselves. Luckily for them, their outlet is cinema instead of hard drugs. It still comes at a price, though.

Their escape into the outside world that led to their discovery (and this documentary) was instigated by Mukunda making the choice one day to simply steal the front door key (their father had the only copy) and go for a walk outside. The circumstances of his break from the apartment were such that he was arrested and put in a psych ward. He’s clearly still scarred by the experience, though the brothers now receive periodic counseling as a result.

I want to think that the moral of the story is that Movies Are All That Matter and that for those inclined, cinema can provide a respite and outlet for even the most severe and bizarre of life circumstances. But again, the reality is a bit darker than that. Oscar has never allowed a visitor into the apartment until Moselle befriended the boys and began work on her film about their lives. Their mother hasn’t had contact with her family for decades. The boys have a younger disabled sister who, while seemingly happy, probably could’ve used more treatment and care than their mother was capable of providing. And what little we do see of Oscar onscreen doesn’t seem to paint a picture of a man too broken up about what he’s done to his family. He simply presents his point of view (basically that he did the right thing, and for righteous reasons).

The film does have what amounts to a satisfying conclusion, such as it is. And apparently the boys have now set up their own Wolfpack Productions. But in the end it feels like we’re still not getting the whole story here. We get where these kids come from, and why, and we see them grow and evolve and come into their own. But at the same time we don’t see or hear a whole lot about the toll their life has taken on them. The film seems to say the kids are happy enough to simply make their movies and let that be that. And certainly that seems to be the case. But if there’s more to it than that, the movie doesn’t really even attempt to address any of that.

Just the same, the film leaves you with a portrait of six brothers who wanted nothing more in the world than to watch movies, talk about movies, and eventually make movies of their own. And even in the face of a complete lack of social skills outside of their own family, over a decade of sharing the same few feet of space with the same nine people, and no access to the film industry whatsoever, their goals caught up with them and now they have their own movie. And are starting to produce their own material. I’m going with The Wolfpack as being the story of how Cinema can change lives and create new realities even in the craziest of circumstances.

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