Review: CATFISH

CATFISH is a challenging film to review. Not because of it’s quality, because the movie is excellent. It’s a challenge because so much of the film’s success relies on not knowing anything, going into the experience with a clean slate. The audience will benefit the most from this movies by simply going for the ride, devoid of any and all expectations, thrilled by where the story leads.

Nev Schulman is a photographer from New York. His brother Ariel Schulman is a filmmaker, so in 2007 he and fellow director Henry Joost decided to shoot a documentary about Nev and his online friendship with a talented 8-year old artist named Abby. The project seemed innocent enough at the time, but what the three would gradually discover is what makes this documentary so compelling.

Abby is a huge fan of Nev’s photography, so she paints pictures from his photographs. The two communicate via Facebook, Nev sends Abby photographs and Abby in turn sends Nev paintings of those photographs. The essence of the relationship is charming. Perhaps even too charming. Nev finds himself fascinated by Abby, her mother Angela and her big sister Megan.

Encouraged by his brother, Nev reluctantly agrees to continue being the subject of Ariel and Henry’s documentary, despite his growing discomfort with putting his life on display. The three ultimately set out on a road trip to meet this curious family, which is where the “truth is often stranger than fiction” element begins to run it’s course in CATFISH with shocking straight-forwardness.

Watching CATFISH is an experience unlike anything I can think of – certainly, many will draw comparisons to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or BORAT, although undeservedly so – this film is much more than any mockumentary you’ve seen before. CATFISH, intentionally or not, draws upon the viewer’s morbid curiosity, dwelling within that same region of the human mind responsible for rubbernecking as we pass by an accident. For all intents and purposes, I am 99.9% positive CATFISH is an honest-to-God “real” documentary, but I still found myself pondering its realism.

Easily, the most extraordinary revelation I had in viewing CATFISH is — regardless of whether its “real” or “fake” — the movie still falls somewhere between inspired creativity and brilliant commentary. Either way I interpret the film, I still return to this overwhelming sense of having witnessed a moving, somewhat shocking and all-too-honest and contemporary social self-portrait of an era of human relationships unique to our Internet generation of the virtually connected.

For the skeptics – and I’m sure there will be plenty – CATFISH may present itself as being too unbelievable to be true, but I return to my earlier reference of the “truth is stranger than fiction” phrase. Nothing about the “performances” feel fake, forced or fabricated. The honesty and authenticity of the characters’ emotions, reactions and interactions with each other is strikingly sincere. More over, to have pulled this film off as it stands — and if it would turn out to be fabricated — is as much a commendable feat as it would be for this three-person crew to have so brilliantly captured the potentially darker, yet innocently non-malicious nature of Nev’s discovery… of living in a society more comfortable in the cyber-surrogate world of online contact than the tangible, flesh and blood world.

CATFISH presents us with a carnival fun house mirror. On one side we see ourselves for who we are, unable to pretend without revealing that we’re pretending. On the other side, the mirror allows us to reinvent ourselves into what we want ourselves to be, even what others want to interpret us as, hiding the reality from each other. I recommend this film to everyone, especially anyone with a Facebook profile. CATFISH is entertaining, yes… but, it’s also quite possibly one of the most culturally significant documentaries this year, if not of the decade.

Overall rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars