Catfish On general release from 17th December
While The Social Network has delivered a significant hit from such unlikely topics as computer programming, business ethics and legal process, David Fincher’s film barely touches on the actual experience of using Facebook. For that, we may turn to controversial documentary Catfish, a snapshot of human interaction and deception in today’s socially networked age.
In their shared New York workspace, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman turn their cameras on the latter’s brother, Nev, a photographer. What hooks their interest is his growing online relationship with the female members of one Michigan family: mother Angela, elder daughter Megan, and eight-year-old Abby, an artistic prodigy who sends him paintings copied from his photos. With 19-year-old Megan, the relationship turns from Facebook flirtation to libidinous SMS exchange.
The fact that Catfish is receiving a theatrical release is a clue there’s more to this story than in your standard fly-on-the-wall doc. It’s no accident that it became the most talked-about documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with Joost, Schulman and Schulman earning equal amounts of acclaim and censure. Catfish certainly makes for uncomfortable viewing, but as a cautionary tale of the addictive nature of constructed fantasies—a virtual Second Life dragged messily into the real world—it presently has no peer.
While The Social Network has delivered a significant hit from such unlikely topics as computer programming, business ethics and legal process, David Fincher’s film barely touches on the actual experience of using Facebook. For that, we may turn to controversial documentary Catfish, a snapshot of human interaction and deception in today’s socially networked age.
In their shared New York workspace, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman turn their cameras on the latter’s brother, Nev, a photographer. What hooks their interest is his growing online relationship with the female members of one Michigan family: mother Angela, elder daughter Megan, and eight-year-old Abby, an artistic prodigy who sends him paintings copied from his photos. With 19-year-old Megan, the relationship turns from Facebook flirtation to libidinous SMS exchange.
The fact that Catfish is receiving a theatrical release is a clue there’s more to this story than in your standard fly-on-the-wall doc. It’s no accident that it became the most talked-about documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with Joost, Schulman and Schulman earning equal amounts of acclaim and censure. Catfish certainly makes for uncomfortable viewing, but as a cautionary tale of the addictive nature of constructed fantasies—a virtual Second Life dragged messily into the real world—it presently has no peer.
