When my mom described this to me, both before and after seeing it herself, I wasn't interested. Part of the problem is that I've lost some of my taste for documentaries, which often strike me as disturbing when not dull. But while house-sitting for my folks this weekend, I decided to see what was playing in walking distance, and TW was due in only a few minutes. It seemed as good a way as any to support the "independent" theater (which needs all the help it can get to stay open).
TW follows...well, "follows" is a stretch. It's about seven mostly male siblings in Manhattan who, at their dad's behest, almost never (zero to nine times a year) left their apartment, always accompanied and not talking to anyone when they did, until one teen dared to rebel in secret. Much of the footage is home video; other parts involve either the older boys or their parents. Their prime passion: movies. No wonder Mom thought of me.
The scenario was not as abusive as it first sounds. The father would slap his wife during arguments, but there are no reports of him striking the kids. He was mainly just paranoid, eccentrically counter-cultural (he refused to get a job for that reason), and arrogant enough to tell his kids he was God. For the most part, the kids didn't even think of going outside. Today they're not sure how overprotective their dad was. At least some resent him (I have trouble keeping them straight, partly because they rarely mention names), but I get the impression that none of them hate him. And I doubt he could get in legal trouble for his parenting style.
Indeed, from what we can tell, they've all been sufficiently happy, healthy, and ethical. It remains to be determined how adequate their education was, but they don't seem terribly ignorant on basic matters. The few times we see them interacting with outsiders, they're not awkward.
So how did they spend their time besides watching movies? Most prominently, by reenacting movies, especially guy flicks, with cheap yet good-looking props. (Do people still say "sweded" seven years after Be Kind Rewind?) I have the advantage over my folks in having seen Reservoir Dogs and No Country for Old Men. The documentary ends with a portion of an amateur original film, suggesting a possible future career for at least one of the boys.
Oh, they also dance to music, have a festive indoor Halloween, and do other not-so-unusual things on camera. Much of the time, we see nothing odder than boys with shoulder-length hair and a proclivity to shirtlessness. (It's a relatively cheap apartment; they probably had no air conditioning.)
Interesting? Enough to sustain 80 minutes. But among apparently honest documentaries, it's about the least informative I've ever seen, and IMDb so far has nothing to add in the trivia section. What do we do with this paltry new knowledge? What lesson can we take away, except the undesirable conclusion that living like that might not be so bad? In a way, that's almost more disturbing than if they'd been abused in earnest. Maybe that's why nobody in the theater applauded, despite the praise TW had enjoyed elsewhere.
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