The Wolfpack, 2015
A man and a woman meet while traveling and discover they have similar aspirations. They want to raise their children free of society's influence on some ideal Swedish farm. The only problem is that a brief stopover in New York becomes permanent. The solution? All seven children (six brothers and a developmentally-disabled sister) are raised in an apartment and never allowed to leave--only their father has the keys to the front door. Isolated in all respects, the brothers immerse themselves in the world of film, meticulously typing up the scripts and building their own props and recreating the entirety of films like
Reservoir Dogs and
Batman Begins. This documentary follows the family after some of the brothers begin to venture outside of the apartment.
There is a lot happening on the surface that makes this seem like it is meant to be a fun little watch. The brothers' homemade cinematic recreations bring them a lot of joy, and we watch footage of creative play and dance parties. With their long hair and soft-spoken mannerisms, this seems like, you know, the
nice kind of cult.
But ultimately this film is a tragedy, and in many ways it is hard to watch. Early on we are given the least surprising piece of information: their father (you know, the one who literally kept them locked up for years at a time) was abusive to their mother and to them at times. When the oldest brother, Mukunda, ventures outside the apartment the first time, he wore a homemade Michael Myers mask . . . and was subsequently arrested and taken to a mental hospital.
It could be easy to watch this film and just enjoy the quirks of the boys, such as the way that one of them slips into a British accent out in public, or the way that the boys seem to adopt certain film personas in order to navigate the outside world. But to the credit of the filmmakers, the movie never goes too long before bringing you back down to earth. These boys do not really know how to socialize (much less date!), and they will clearly have to grapple for a long time with the unhealthy relationship that has been modeled for them their whole lives.
One of the most interesting aspects of the documentary is that, while the boys are meant to be the stars of the film, there is this subplot about a parallel liberation of the boys' mother. In a short, telling interview, the mother notes that while the boys had a lot of rules, she had even more. Under the eye of the director, the boys' mother, Susanne, calls her mother for the first time in decades. It is implied that the mother has also not left the apartment in a very long time. It is frustrating to see that the abusive relationship between the parents will continue uninterrupted.
Despite how sad this movie made me, I have to say that the creativity the boys show is astounding. Their homemade props and costumes are amazing. Toward the end of the film, we see the way that the boys could possibly leverage their years of creativity to get real-world jobs. On the other hand, all of their creativity was born out of confinement, and so even the most joyful recreation of a scene from
Pulp Fiction can't disguise that their recreation comes from a very isolated place.
One small issue I had with the film was the decision to keep the narrative entirely "inside" the apartment/family. We get no interviews with Susanne's family. There is a story the boys tell about a police raid on their apartment--and we get no further details on that. What do their neighbors think? On one hand I respect the idea of limiting the point of view to the family, but this decision leaves certain gaps that I felt were important to understanding the story.
A solid little documentary that is inspiring and tragic all at once.