Review by David Franklin
Featuring Yaniv “Nev” Schulman, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost, Angela Wesselman-Pierce, Abby Pierce, Megan Faccio, Vince Pierce, Ronald Pierce, Anthony Pierce
Produced by Andrew Jarecki & Marc Smerling
Certification UK 12A | US PG-13
Runtime 87 minutes
Directed by Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost
You strike me as the kind of person who shrieks like the housekeeper out of Tom and Jerry when you’re tagged in a photo on Facebook that doesn’t look like it was flatteringly lit by award winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, and it’s that need to shape and finesse one’s online presence that lies at the heart of the new documentary Catfish, a film that caused frenzied debate at last winter’s Sundance Film Festival.
If The Social Network was a riveting look at the creation of Facebook, then Catfish is an equally riveting companion piece, and the first film to capture completely the online life many of us lead via Facebook, and the occasionally disturbing implications therein (disturbing for you, but not me: while you’re tagging your friends in those office party photos I’m probably, I don’t know, studying gorillas up close in the mountain forests of Rwanda as part of 18 years of research into primates in their natural environments ... or something. What can I say, I’m the outdoorsy type).
When young, hip New York photographer Nev Schulman is contacted via Facebook by 8-year-old painter Abby who’s something of a child prodigy, his brother Ariel and fellow filmmaker Henry Joost decide to document the friendship on film. A few friend requests, pokes and wall posts later and Nev has become infatuated with Abby’s older sister Megan, a stunning blonde and aspiring artist. Months of texting and chatting on the phone pass until suddenly Nev realises that something isn’t right ... Megan is almost too good to be true.
For much of it’s running time Catfish works almost as a kind of procedural thriller. The story unfolds at a rapid pace via a messy but sprightly visual style where characters are introduced via their tags in Facebook photos, and journeys are mapped out with images from Google StreetView. Along the way the filmmakers unlock clues that point to the true nature of Megan and her family. To say any more would spoil the experience, but the film takes an unexpected turn in its final third when Nev and his team decide to pay Abby, Megan and their mother a visit at their home in Michigan. The last half hour is genuinely unnerving and, surprisingly, extremely moving.
Much has been made of the film’s veracity. Morgan Spurlock called it “the best fake documentary I’ve ever seen”. Frequently asked questions include “Why didn’t the presumably internet savvy Nev smell a rat sooner?” and “Why were they even filming this seemingly innocuous Facebook friendship in the first place?” So is Catfish a work of fiction? I can’t give you a definitive answer, and in fact the debate you’ll have after watching the film is part of the fun, but I will say this: the key moments that make up the last third of the film simply have to be real. If they’re not, then they contain probably the best naturalistic acting ever put on film. They’re real, I’m sure of it. And even if the film is a fabrication, I’m not sure that it matters: it’s both a gripping depiction of the blurred line between reality and online fantasy (it’s even made me question my blossoming friendship with that exiled Nigerian Prince who emailed me recently), and an achingly sad look at the sometimes desperate need of people to connect (with others, not to the internet, although my occasional battles with my router are pretty heartbreaking).
So go and see it, it’s a more exciting journey through a cyber-world than TRON: Legacy, and essential viewing for anyone that’s sneakily gone through the photos of an attractive friend of a friend, and then enlarged and printed those photos and gradually built a life-size doll of her and then cuddled her tenderly, rocking back and forth, weeping silently. Come on, we’ve all been there.