Catfish (2010)

Also known as the other Facebook movie from last year, Catfish was the rare documentary that managed some breakout fame outside of the usual festival circuit. Focusing on the nature of online relationships and the way they impact people it tells a fascinating, and worrying tale. Part of the films big success comes from the way it is constructed, rather than being a typical documentary the film is structured more like a drama, the conceit being that the true nature of the story was only uncovered whilst filming.

The film starts by documenting the relationship between Nev Schulman, a photographer based in New York and Abby , a 10 year old girl from rural Michigan after she starts sending him paintings of his photographs in the post. Through Abby, Nev and his brother and filmmaker housemate (who is capturing the whole episode on camera) get to know her whole family including her older sister, an aspiring model and musician whom Nev has an immediate connection with. A lot of the power of the film comes from how this set up evolves and reveals itself, so I won’t spoil it here, but suffice to say not everything is as it seems.

The nature of the story and way that it is captured does lend it a slight air of having been deliberately constructed in parts, especially near the start, but this never really distracts from the film because the ending, and the reveal (as it were) are so well handled and moving that they suddenly make the whole tale very real, and very sad.

It’s hard to talk about the film without going into detail of what actually happens, but therein lies the interest. A lot of the film’s success is down to the likeable performances from the three housemates documenting the story as it unfolds, the construction of the film draws you into the mystery and provides some wonderfully tense and uncomfortable moments. It is not, at the end of the day, a particularly deep film, it doesn’t pretend to have something new to say about the way we conduct our lives online in this modern age, but it does shine a light on an area of this and raise some interesting, and troubling questions.

It is the sort of film whose power lies in the puzzle it lays out, and the conversations it prompts after the fact. It is an unashamedly populist form of documentary but one that I did find not only entertaining, but surprisingly restrained and quietly powerful. It runs at a brisk pace for its 80 minute runtime, so even if you are normally adverse to documentaries I would urge you to give it a shot and see what you make of it all.