In order to really convey my thoughts about Catfish, I'll have to address the plot, which unfortunately gives away the main drive of seeing this film - the truth. In order to do so I shall write a brief teaser/critique, followed by four hash marks, where I will then freely talk about the plot, spoilers and all. Please see the film before reading ahead. As a great deal of the promotional material states - the less you read about this film, the better.
One of the other fantastic quotes I read really summarized the experience of Catfish for me: "If THE SOCIAL NETWORK is Facebook's origin story, then CATFISH deals with the consequences" (source unknown). The story is of Photographer Nev Schulman, who shares an office with filmmakers Ariel (Nev's brother) and Henry Joost. Nev recieves a painting of one of his photographs from an incredibly talented eight-year-old artist from Michigan - and the two force a unique friendship via Facebook. This friendship then expands from eight-year-old Abbey to her mother, Angela, half-sister Megan, Angela's husband and a variety of the family's friends from Michigan.
After this relationship is developed, Ariel and Henry become more and more intrigued with the situation, and begin making a documentary about the dynamic between the Pierce family and Nev, paying special attention to the romance blossoming between Nev and Megan. Much of the controversy of the film comes from the fact that people don't believe it to be real - however meeting the film's three mains (Joost and the Schulman’s) I will honestly say I believe the film to be totally factual, if they're fooling their audience, they fooled me. The film is completely simple, but it's gut-wrenching, horrifying and oddly mesmerizing. Not harmed by Nev's odd humor and off-handed comments, or the fraternal bickering throughout the film, it's a very interesting paring of social media and film. The film is being released within Australia in upcoming weeks, and I highly recommend you see it, especially if you speak to other social media users you've never actually met. Without spoiling anything, I can honestly say I really enjoyed the film, and with high expectations, I was not letdown whatsoever. Documentaries can so often be dry and slow, but this film manages to build tension, character and lead the audience by the hand down a story, which twists and turns like you wouldn't believe to be true. While most of the time is spent trying to decode if the men are actually 'acting' or faking any of the film, suspend your disbelief for 86 minutes, and allow yourself to really engage in the story, you wont be disappointed.
If, by chance, these three men have duped audiences, and have crafted a film so well to fool people into believing its sincerity, I'd still recommend it. The truth of the story only engages the viewer more so in thinking about how often we interact with those we really know nothing about. Too much time has already been spent nitpicking the veracity of the film, personally I find it to be a waste of energy. The woman next to me in the cinema obviously thought the film to be fictitious, and had already assigned herself to that long before the film had finished - she then huffed and rolled her eyes for an hour or so, and completely disengaged. It wouldn't have bothered me but her dress was really ugly.
Make sure you wear something cute, and do go see this film.
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SPOILERS TO FOLLOW:
In all honesty, I thought this film was going to take a Cloverfield-esque turn and have Nev killed horribly by a deranged farmer or mutated squid creature hiding behind a shed. When the men approach Megan's horse ranch there was just such a perfect moment for some kind of chainsaw massacre to occur, and the very fact that I had no idea what the major 'twist' was allowed me to come to several insane conclusions at once, hyping myself up to the point where when the truth was revealed, even that itself was still incredibly twisted.
I will admit there are some things that have left questions which raised the questions in my head - were the filmmakers already quite aware that the Pierce family was not what they appeared to be much earlier than they pretended to, yet continued their 'journey of discovery' in order to have a better plot? The fact that Nev never followed up on the delivery of the postcards, or the fact that many of the facebook profiles only had 10-15 friends, *no one* only has 10 friends. Even my mother has about 200, and she has trouble remembering how to scroll with a trackpad. But even still the scenes of discovery were amazing, when the men were finding the original artists of the songs Angela 'records' is fantastic. One can’t help but smile through the whole thing, fascinated by what is actually happening.
What I also found incredibly interesting is once Angela's truth is revealed, the film never really portrays her as a villain or as an insane person, but as someone tortured. When she is drawing Nev and begins to talk 'as Megan', I was actually horrified, not just for Nev (though mainly) but for Angela as well. Her husband's monologue, where the title of the film hails from, is beautiful but also devastating. In fewer words, Vince tells the camera plainly that his wife may have aspirations, but she chose to abandon them and stay with him. To him, she obviously made the right decision, to the audience it is not as clear.
I'm still tentative to say that this film is completely true, but I do believe there is a lot of truth behind it, and even more important - I think it's a fantastic exploit of film and internet. While The Social Network really lays out the genius behind facebook, Catfish lays out the genius of the users, I can only hope this is the beginning of a new kind of documentary, one that documents human experience in real-time with the audience.
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