From the Archive: Catfish (2010 )

Given the importance of "cat-fishing" in the current news cycle, I thought it might be interesting to feature this documentary review from the archive today.

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's documentary Catfish is a cautionary tale for the Internet Age, a compelling and yet surprisingly emotional reminder to not always believe everything you see online. 

The controversial 2010 film is also a testament to how important the online or electronic experience has become to our society and our relationships in the twenty-first century, an epoch when you "sext" your prospective partner without ever having met her face-to-face, and when photos on Facebook are readily accepted as truthful identification of strangers.

Catfish depicts a strange and unnerving chapter in the life of successful New York photographer Yaniv Schulman, whose work was recently published in a prominent magazine. 

Following that publication, Yaniv  is contacted by 8-year old Abby Faccio, a child prodigy who produces a startling and life-like painting of his photo, and who, after that introduction, keeps sending him further gifts.  Each package has a new painting in it, and more: T-shirts and the like.

As Yaniv's brother and friend -- the film's directors -- record him in his studio responding to Abby's unusual artistry, Yaniv is drawn deeper and deeper into her world.  For instance, he learns of her beautiful and eccentric mother, Angela, and their home in Michigan.  One day, a snowstorm there topples their 150-year old maple tree, and it has to be bulldozed.  Yaniv reflects that their life sounds great "...at least from Facebook."

And then, finally, Yaniv starts to develop a long-distance relationship with Megan, Abby's 19-year old sister.  Megan, I should add, is a gorgeous ballet dancer who plays the cello and guitar, and rides horses on her farm.

Recognize this face?  It's Megan Faccio, or is it?

Soon, Yaniv is head-over-heels in love with a woman he has never met, and Catfish portrays this budding romance in totally electronic terms, with a dazzling flurry of images and posts on Facebook, with IM chats, music downloads, and even some establishing shot imagery that purposefully suggests the layout of Google Maps. 

YouTube makes an important appearance in the film too.  We get extreme close-ups of Internet transmission buttons reading "Send" and "Confirm."  The impression is instant connection, not to mention instant gratification.

But Yaniv's keyboard love life comes into question unexpectedly when he learns that the songs Megan has downloaded on Facebook and represented as her own work are actually already on YouTube; the recordings of other artists. 

Appropriately, the photographer begins to suspect that there is much more going on than meets the eye, and commences a road trip to Michigan (with his filmmaker friends, naturally...) to meet Megan, Angela and Abby face-to-face.  He wants to know if he's been lied to.    He wants to know if the Faccios are "complete psychopaths."

To tell you anything further about Catfish would probably ruin the effect of the film's heartfelt, even devastating third act.  But suffice it to say, before you learn the "secret" of Megan, Angela and Abby Faccio, these documentarians wring significant anxiety and mystery out of their cautionary tale. 

A 2:00 am, thick-of-the-night stop at an apparently abandoned horse farm supposedly belonging to Megan will have you on the edge of your seat, simply because you have no idea what to expect.  And once it is established that dishonesty is involved with the Facebook profiles, the movie makes the most with very little in terms of budget and location, causing you to wonder how strange, diabolical, or weird the journey's destination and resolution might be.  This is a brilliant feint, especially given the film's valedictory moments.

I wrote above that Catfish is controversial, and that's because many people (including some critics) don't believe it is a legitimate documentary.  Rather, they believe that elements of the film (particularly how things are set-up in the first half) are deliberately staged. 

I will state, unequivocally, that there is no way that anything that occurs in the third act could possibly be staged, or faked.  

Rather, it is one of the most unexpected, heart-rending twists you could rightly imagine, and no conventional Hollywood narrative would have dared taken this distinctly un-glamorous direction. The person who is the subject of this third act, in that Michigan house, does not give a movie performance; but delivers - staggeringly - the entirety of a real personality; of an individual life.  She presents everything that Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter can't, even at their pinnacle.   This human portrait that ends the film is so powerful it takes the breath away.

Whether any part of Catfish is faked may be of great interest for the historical record, but ultimately it doesn't matter in terms of how well the movie works. 

In this case, the idea that a documentary may not be exactly what it claims simply mirrors the subject matter; the idea that Facebook and other social networks aren't venues of strict truth.  As readers here well know, I  steadfastly believe that cinema reaches an apex of  quality when form echoes content, and so -- even if artificial to some extent -- Catfish passes that test.  The film's ultimately questionable form echoes the questionable content of Megan, Angela, and Abby's online, electronic lives.

Romance via Photoshop.

What's the take-away from Catfish? Perhaps only that human beings are strange, multi-faceted creatures, and that our Internet avatars are alter-egos that may represent many things, but not the totality of that human equation.  Those online "lives" may represent fragments of a personality.  Or projections of who we are...or would like to be.  They can be manifestations of fantasy, desire, or, at times, of a need to escape unpleasant reality.  But they, can't, finally, be the full person.

I've rarely seen a movie get at this relatively thoughtful and deep notion better than Catfish.  To quote Yaniv, this movie may really "freak you out," or it may, unexpectedly, rouse in you deep feelings of...sympathy.  

And the caution in the cautionary tale?  The Internet is life all right, only it is life Photo-shopped.