Nuancier Doc tells a captivating story – in triplicate: NPR

It did not hurt that the three boys, as we see in the movies and clips of the TV tour, were unmanned teddy bears with liquid brown eyes, masses of black and modest curls , a smile-ready camera. Paraded in front of a captivated audience, they showed themselves conscientiously in the same outfits, crossed their legs in unison on demand, confessed under pressure to have the same taste in women. All had struggled in high school, and was not it surprising that they all adopted sisters? Bobby, Eddy and David toured the club, got married, opened a restaurant together. Their celebrity status was based on their identity, and as long as they could play with the packaging, everything was so cute. Until that was not the case, and here the story of the boys, or the stories (plural shards with meaning), went from amazing to incredible, very dark.

On his face, Three Identical Strangers presents as a straight documentary in front with the usual mix of home and media, reenactments, and testimonials from friends, family, other interested parties as well as two of the siblings themselves. In fact, the film is a story of investigation built with art to give us the sense to discover, with boys and their families, several layers of buried secrets and lies that have upset their adult lives. If ever a story called multiple stories and dig deep into the past, that's it. The triplets continued to spread identities and start over in a cataclysmic revival – once at birth, again when they met and were drawn into a media circus, and then, as new information exchanged their stories. From the moment they were born, the film shows that adoptive families were victims of occasional abuse of power, on the part of the adoption agency that hid their biological kinship and their status triplet, to scientists. who used them as pigs from India for a study of nature versus culture that has never been published, to the media that trapped them in a fairy tale to which they could never comply. Watching these families be swallowed up by a biased exposure to the public, reminded me of the 2003 documentary by Andrew Jarecki Capturing the Friedmans in which a Long Island family already troubled in a mistreatment affair. Children were further crucified by rushes to judgment on the part of the police, courts, media and their local community.

Wardle captures the indignation of families about what had been hidden from them. Sensitive to the historical context, he brought journalist Lawrence Wright, author of a book on twin studies, as well as former researchers, to show that ethical concerns about privacy and disclosure were less rooted in the professional practice of the sixties. are today. Yet interpreting the past through reenactment can be difficult. The adoption agency is closed now and there is no one to check the dramatized memory of an adoptive father who remembers tripping over council members who are burning themselves with champagne after a meeting in which they thought pacify the angry parents with half-truths [19659008Dansuneautretournured'unconteserpentinqueWardlesuitcommeunthrillernousapprenonsquelestriplésavaientunechoseencommun:tousavaientdespassagestroublésdel'enfanceàl'adolescencemaissesmanifestationsvariaientdegarçonengarçonTouslestroisontgrandidansdesfamillesjuivesmaisilsontétendulespectredelaclasseetleursstylesparentauxontvariéavecunpèredisciplinaireprenantlepoidsdelaresponsabilitédel'instabilitéémotionnelledesonfilsQuandunancienchercheurlitàpartirdesnotesqu'ilaprisespendantlestestsnousenapprenonsautantsurlesparentsinsouciantsquiontprévaluchezlespsychologuesaprèslaSecondeGuerremondialequesurlesdifficultésprécocesdesgarçons

. The differences between the triplets had become glaring, and even the similarities do not match the fable of a happy similarity in which the media had enveloped them. Here, the nature-culture debate heats up and the pendulum of the film oscillates between heredity and environment, while we attend the disparate destinies that affected the three men. "It's all about culture!" exclaims a relative. Not everything this nuanced film is clear. And in the perplexed and anxious cry of a triplet about a lost brother, "why not me, I do not know," a clue emerges that there is nature, and he There is awakening and unknowable mysteries of the human character: Who succumbs to the trauma and who survives, and what survival means even when you have lost your flesh and blood many times.

Towards the end of Three Identical Aliens Wardle unites two brothers to inspect new information about their past on a laptop. What they discover is quite disturbing, but what really breaks the viewer's heart is the nervous discomfort with which they greet each other, two identical strangers who were once close but who do not seem to be alone. have been encountered for a while and who seem to have lost the one thing we suppose that twins should be able to rely on. Trust.