Flick of The Day: Catfish

The perils of the Internet age are not something that has been really examined in any detail by the Hollywood mainstream. Indeed technology in general has been poorly treated, with David Fincher's The Social Network being the only mainstream release to look at social networking, and even then it was more the form of a hagiography then anything else. Today's flick of the day, Catfish, would seem to be quite a welcome change. A documentary that examines the perils of an online relationship.

Catfish

Nev Schulman is a New York based photographer, specialising in dance portraits, who lives with his brother Ariel and Henry Joost, both film-makers. One day out of the blue, Nev receives a paiting of one of his photographs from an 8 year old girl in rural Michigan, Abby Pierce, a child prodigy. They become Facebook friends, broadening into a family network that includes Abby's Mother, Angela, her attractive 19 year old sister Megan and her father Vince. Nev becomes enchanted by Megan, a talented songwriter and dancer and he begins a long distance relationship via Facebook and telephone, the tools of the modern day romantic. His brother Ariel and Henry decide to document the relationship and this forms the basis of the the film. As the relationship develops, they discuss meeting in person and Megan sends him copies of her songs to listen to. However Nev discovers that these songs are taken from someone else's work on YouTube. Hurt and worried she has lied about other things, he wants to call it off. However Ariel and Henry convince him to continue. They decide to travel to Michigan to confront Megan and the family and get to the bottom of the mystery with a shocking though not unexpected conclusion.

Catfish is an engrossing film if nothing else. It has the kind of fiendishly addictive storyline that drives so many great documentary films. You really feel like you can't take your eyes off it. There have been allegations, naturally that the film is not true to life. You can draw your own conclusions but personally I would be of the opinion that the events are portrayed as they occurred, though perhaps not filmed at the moment they occurred. Also, it would be fair to say that the film-makers are somewhat disingenuous in their actions. I think any logical thinking person would have guessed what was at the end of the tunnel early on, and that they choose to keep themselves out of the loop as long as possible to make the film more entertaining and it is difficult to argue that it makes for compelling viewing.

Ultimately though the directors seem to have missed the point of the story. They seem focused on showing how shocking they believe the ending is and miss the fact that it is a sad story more then anything else and never investigates why people choose to misrepresent themselves on the internet if there is no monetary gain.  This wider context would have been useful and again I come back to my earlier point about how they allowed themselves to be taken in for the purposes of the film. I firmly believe this and it becomes obvious at the end, who is exploiting who here? The big city hip artistes or the small town loners?

That said, the film is definitely worth seeing if only for the many questions it raises, surely the sign of a worthy documentary. While not as good as the promo below makes out, it is still intriguing.