Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. 86 minutes.
A documentary featuring Yaniv Schulman, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and Angela Wesselman. Released by Rogue Pictures.
It’s difficult to figure out what’s real and what’s not anymore. This is not the first time you’ve likely heard this and it won’t be the last. With the rise to prominence of social networking sites such as Facebook, which will get its close up next month in David Fincher’s The Social Network, the popularity of Twitter, endless reality shows that have taken over television and a boom in mockumentary films from The Last Exorcism and Paranormal Activity and even Joaquin Phoenix’s media hoax experiment I’m Still Here, fact is often stranger than fiction and it often actually is fiction. That leaves me with the question: What is Catfish? Is it an actual documentary or are we watching actors using the documentary method to grasp at themes relevant to the Meta age of media?
Regardless, it’s an interesting experiment. Although the film is being billed as yet the next in a long line of films such as those mentioned above (Paranormal Activity, etc.), Catfish is more of a mystery than anything else. At the picture’s end, I was left with a few questions, such as why the documented (photographer Yaniv Schulman) would be so intrigued by a 19-year-old girl from Michigan who posts average guitar-strumming pop songs on Facebook or the film’s subject and the object of his online obsession avoided coming face to face for so long. But for the sake of just watching and reviewing the film, I’ll suspend any disbelief I may have.
The film has been directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, as I’ve said before, as a documentary. The pair is documenting the online friendship struck up between Yaniv, Ariel’s brother, and a family in Michigan. The mother in that family is Angela, an attractive middle aged woman, and her daughter, Abby, is apparently an artistic prodigy. At the film’s beginning, Angela has sent a painting to Yaniv based on one of his photographs. She tells him her daughter is the artist, reminding me of a documentary from several years ago, My Kid Could Paint That. Soon thereafter, Yaniv strikes up an online “relationship,” of sorts, with Abby’s older sister, Megan, a 19-year-old beauty who is also an artist and musician. She posts her versions of “Tennessee Stud” on Facebook, much to Yaniv’s amazement.
But there’s something fishy and Yaniv soon digs up some information on Megan’s “music” that makes him suspicious. Angela and her family come up with excuses why they cannot meet up with Yaniv. There’s always something. Abby is never able to talk on the phone. So, naturally, Schulman and the filmmakers decide to track the family down. About halfway through the movie, Catfish shortly becomes a thriller before morphing into something entirely else. At times poignant and others sad, the film is a document of our times, despite the creaky cliché involved in that expression. As we continue to rely on the Internet as a primary source – all the while, newspapers slowly disappear, we will be forced to judge what is real, what is reliable, what is purported. Catfish taps into these ideas. It may be easy to spot the direction in which the film is moving, but you’ll likely be moved – or, perhaps, angered – regardless. One way or another, you’ll probably have a strong opinion about it.