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Universal PicturesNev Schulman in “Catfish.”
The World Where You Aren’t What You Post
By A. O. SCOTT
Nowadays, when you hear people talking about “the Facebook movie,” chances are they mean “The Social Network,” David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s soon-to-open inquiry into the rise of Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook. But the description might be even better suited to “Catfish,” a documentary by Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman that caused some hyperventilation at the Sundance Film Festival last winter.
“The Social Network” is about origins, while “Catfish,” at once narrower and more universal in implication, is about consequences. Mr. Zuckerberg may be the genius who invented Facebook and cashed in on its success, but many of the rest of us live, at least some of the time, in the world he made, and on the evidence of “Catfish,” it can be a pretty creepy place.
And also one stippled with contradiction. Does social networking make us more outgoing, or more narcissistic? Does the Web foster happy communities of far-flung, like-minded people, or does it provide cover for predators and scam artists?
On the Internet, an ancient New Yorker cartoon caption observes, nobody knows you’re a dog. But everyone assumes you’re a sucker, susceptible to the pleas of hard-luck Nigerian royalty or eager to enhance your sexual prowess. You can have so many friends, fans and followers that you might not grasp just how radically alone you really are.
“Catfish” flops down into this paradoxical reality and proceeds to generate some complications of its own. Judged by the usual standards, it is a wretched documentary: visually and narratively sloppy; coy about its motives; slipshod in its adherence to basic ethical norms. The filmmakers, who occasionally appear on camera, shoot and edit with at least minimal competence, but their approach to the potentially volatile and undeniably exploitive implications of their stumbled-upon story is muddled and defensive. Shame on them, if that would mean anything to them.
But at the same time — precisely because of these lapses — “Catfish” is a fascinating document, at once glib, untrustworthy and strangely authentic. I say this with a heavy sigh: this is, by far, one of the most intriguing movies of the year.
The story “Catfish” has to tell, at least in part, is older than the Internet, and certainly not limited to the latest technology. You may have read “The Confidence Man,” by Herman Melville, or followed the strange literary career of J.T. Leroy, or you may cherish the lore of your own favorite frauds and hoaxsters and impostors, from Jay Gatsby to Don Draper. America is the land of spurious, seat-of-the-pants self-invention, and Mr. Joost and Mr. Shulman, a couple of young men with cameras and college degrees, find themselves in a real-life variation on a venerable American theme.
I mention all of these precedents to give some of the flavor of “Catfish” without spoiling it outright. But be warned: There is a big, not entirely unsurprising twist that lies like a booby trap in the middle of the film, and the choice is either to reveal what happens or forgo a discussion of the movie’s logic and meaning. The directors and the distributors would obviously prefer the second option, but the expectation of discretion is a trap. So consider yourself warned. I’ll try not to spell out too much, but neither am I willing to play along in a rigged game.
Anyway, the story goes like this: A few years ago Nev Shulman, the younger brother of one of the filmmakers, was befriended by a girl in Michigan named Abby, who seemed to be an artistic prodigy. She wanted permission to use one of Nev’s photographs as the basis of a painting, and in the course of their correspondence revealed that she was, at the age of 8, exhibiting and selling her work online and in galleries in her hometown. Nev’s fraternal friendship with Abby led to a warm rapport with her mother, Angela, and also to a blossoming cyberflirtation with Megan, the girl’s 19-year-old sister, who posted enticing profile pictures on her Facebook page.
Megan seemed to be falling in love with Nev, whom she had never met. They exchanged sexy text messages and talked on the telephone, and she posted songs that she had written and pictures of the horse farm she was about to buy. At various points in their courtship, and in his dealings with Angela, Nev experiences a qualm, and tries to persuade his brother and Mr. Joost to let him out of the movie. They bully and cajole and keep the cameras running, and Nev, seemingly the most guileless and perhaps for that reason the most decent person in “Catfish,” plays along in spite of his queasiness.
A photocomposition that Nev Schulman made of himself and the woman he courts, Megan, in the new film "Catfish."
When the time comes to pay a visit to Michigan, he also shows himself to be much braver than Mr. Shulman or Mr. Joost, who turn panicky when their little investigation into the nature of reality turns strange. When the going gets weird, Hunter S. Thompson used to say, the weird turn pro, but these filmmakers never transcend their own amateurism. They turn what could have been a brilliant exploration of the hidden corners of contemporary reality into an opportunity for gawking and condescension. Look at these crazy folks out there in the sticks! Let’s go back to New York and edit the footage so our friends can see just how crazy they are!
But the object of the film’s patronizing, pitying gaze is also the person who saves it: Angela, a woman whose life is, at first glance, a web of self-delusions, compulsive deceptions and plain desperation. Her whispery, sincere, wide-eyed lies and evasions were met, at the crowded screening I attended, with derisive laughter punctuated by gasps of horror. Plain-looking and soft-spoken, she seemed to be either a clown or a monster.
She might be those things, but in spite of its own facile, faux-naïf manipulations, “Catfish” reveals her to be something else as well, namely an artist. Mr. Joost and Mr. Shulman, young and entitled filmmakers, assume that the sophistication is all on their side, but Angela’s mastery of the media of modern self-expression — from painting to social media to her very being — surpasses theirs in every way.
Some acknowledgment of this power comes in a conversation with her husband, who tells the story that gives the movie its title, but everything that is radical, disturbing and true about “Catfish” belongs to the fabulist at its center. Mr. Shulman and Mr. Joost will continue to enjoy the success and cachet of having made a pop culture conversation piece, which is a tribute to their good luck and nimble opportunism. But the dark genius of their film lies elsewhere, beyond the parameters of its slick intentions, in the wild social ether where nobody knows who anybody is.
“Catfish” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some swearing and creepy suspense.
CATFISH
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost; directors of photography, Mr. Joost, Ariel Schulman and Yaniv Schulman; produced by Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, Mr. Joost and Ariel Schulman; released by Rogue. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/09/17...17catfish.html
Nowadays, when you hear people talking about “the Facebook movie,” chances are they mean “The Social Network,” David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s soon-to-open inquiry into the rise of Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook. But the description might be even better suited to “Catfish,” a documentary by Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman that caused some hyperventilation at the Sundance Film Festival last winter.
“The Social Network” is about origins, while “Catfish,” at once narrower and more universal in implication, is about consequences. Mr. Zuckerberg may be the genius who invented Facebook and cashed in on its success, but many of the rest of us live, at least some of the time, in the world he made, and on the evidence of “Catfish,” it can be a pretty creepy place.
And also one stippled with contradiction. Does social networking make us more outgoing, or more narcissistic? Does the Web foster happy communities of far-flung, like-minded people, or does it provide cover for predators and scam artists?
On the Internet, an ancient New Yorker cartoon caption observes, nobody knows you’re a dog. But everyone assumes you’re a sucker, susceptible to the pleas of hard-luck Nigerian royalty or eager to enhance your sexual prowess. You can have so many friends, fans and followers that you might not grasp just how radically alone you really are.
“Catfish” flops down into this paradoxical reality and proceeds to generate some complications of its own. Judged by the usual standards, it is a wretched documentary: visually and narratively sloppy; coy about its motives; slipshod in its adherence to basic ethical norms. The filmmakers, who occasionally appear on camera, shoot and edit with at least minimal competence, but their approach to the potentially volatile and undeniably exploitive implications of their stumbled-upon story is muddled and defensive. Shame on them, if that would mean anything to them.
But at the same time — precisely because of these lapses — “Catfish” is a fascinating document, at once glib, untrustworthy and strangely authentic. I say this with a heavy sigh: this is, by far, one of the most intriguing movies of the year.
The story “Catfish” has to tell, at least in part, is older than the Internet, and certainly not limited to the latest technology. You may have read “The Confidence Man,” by Herman Melville, or followed the strange literary career of J.T. Leroy, or you may cherish the lore of your own favorite frauds and hoaxsters and impostors, from Jay Gatsby to Don Draper. America is the land of spurious, seat-of-the-pants self-invention, and Mr. Joost and Mr. Shulman, a couple of young men with cameras and college degrees, find themselves in a real-life variation on a venerable American theme.
I mention all of these precedents to give some of the flavor of “Catfish” without spoiling it outright. But be warned: There is a big, not entirely unsurprising twist that lies like a booby trap in the middle of the film, and the choice is either to reveal what happens or forgo a discussion of the movie’s logic and meaning. The directors and the distributors would obviously prefer the second option, but the expectation of discretion is a trap. So consider yourself warned. I’ll try not to spell out too much, but neither am I willing to play along in a rigged game.
Anyway, the story goes like this: A few years ago Nev Shulman, the younger brother of one of the filmmakers, was befriended by a girl in Michigan named Abby, who seemed to be an artistic prodigy. She wanted permission to use one of Nev’s photographs as the basis of a painting, and in the course of their correspondence revealed that she was, at the age of 8, exhibiting and selling her work online and in galleries in her hometown. Nev’s fraternal friendship with Abby led to a warm rapport with her mother, Angela, and also to a blossoming cyberflirtation with Megan, the girl’s 19-year-old sister, who posted enticing profile pictures on her Facebook page.
Megan seemed to be falling in love with Nev, whom she had never met. They exchanged sexy text messages and talked on the telephone, and she posted songs that she had written and pictures of the horse farm she was about to buy. At various points in their courtship, and in his dealings with Angela, Nev experiences a qualm, and tries to persuade his brother and Mr. Joost to let him out of the movie. They bully and cajole and keep the cameras running, and Nev, seemingly the most guileless and perhaps for that reason the most decent person in “Catfish,” plays along in spite of his queasiness.
A photocomposition that Nev Schulman made of himself and the woman he courts, Megan, in the new film "Catfish."
When the time comes to pay a visit to Michigan, he also shows himself to be much braver than Mr. Shulman or Mr. Joost, who turn panicky when their little investigation into the nature of reality turns strange. When the going gets weird, Hunter S. Thompson used to say, the weird turn pro, but these filmmakers never transcend their own amateurism. They turn what could have been a brilliant exploration of the hidden corners of contemporary reality into an opportunity for gawking and condescension. Look at these crazy folks out there in the sticks! Let’s go back to New York and edit the footage so our friends can see just how crazy they are!
But the object of the film’s patronizing, pitying gaze is also the person who saves it: Angela, a woman whose life is, at first glance, a web of self-delusions, compulsive deceptions and plain desperation. Her whispery, sincere, wide-eyed lies and evasions were met, at the crowded screening I attended, with derisive laughter punctuated by gasps of horror. Plain-looking and soft-spoken, she seemed to be either a clown or a monster.
She might be those things, but in spite of its own facile, faux-naïf manipulations, “Catfish” reveals her to be something else as well, namely an artist. Mr. Joost and Mr. Shulman, young and entitled filmmakers, assume that the sophistication is all on their side, but Angela’s mastery of the media of modern self-expression — from painting to social media to her very being — surpasses theirs in every way.
Some acknowledgment of this power comes in a conversation with her husband, who tells the story that gives the movie its title, but everything that is radical, disturbing and true about “Catfish” belongs to the fabulist at its center. Mr. Shulman and Mr. Joost will continue to enjoy the success and cachet of having made a pop culture conversation piece, which is a tribute to their good luck and nimble opportunism. But the dark genius of their film lies elsewhere, beyond the parameters of its slick intentions, in the wild social ether where nobody knows who anybody is.
“Catfish” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some swearing and creepy suspense.
CATFISH
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost; directors of photography, Mr. Joost, Ariel Schulman and Yaniv Schulman; produced by Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, Mr. Joost and Ariel Schulman; released by Rogue. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/09/17...17catfish.html
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