Day 13 The
Wolfpack [2015 documentary]
Director Crystal Moselle
Music
Composition Danny Bensi, Saunder
Jurriaans, Aska Matsumiya
Subject Angulo children and
their parents
Production Kotva Films,
Verisimilitude
IMDb 7/10
Rotten Tomatoes 85%
I loved this documentary. It’s been on my watch list since I saw the trailer and it did not let me down. It is an incredible story and such luck for Moselle to stumble across it. The documentary is all about a group of brothers who have essentially only learnt about the world through the medium of film. They had a very controlling father who barely let them out of the house, one year they didn’t leave the house at all. They were home schooled but their parents had a collection of over a thousand films which have definitely influenced the Angulo brothers’ lives the most. They act out entire movies themselves, learning the lines to perfection, making their own props out of cereal boxes and tape. Their world is the movie world. Moselle stumbled across them on one of their rare outings and she was one of the first people who was ever invited back to the Angulo’s small New York City flat. She asked if she could make a documentary and they let her. The film is mostly conversations with the brothers, mixed in with footage which they themselves shot throughout their lives stuck in the flat. The brothers are remarkably bright and rational, which is probably why Moselle was allowed to film. If you are a true lover of the art of documentary-making you may not like this film as Moselle avoids any deeper questions of how the boys feel having been cooped up for their entire childhood, under the watch of an alcoholic father who beat his wife. This documentary could have been much darker, spine-tingling and potentially better. Nothing stands out in terms of film-making but the story is great and I really enjoyed it the way it was, just a neutral look at some brilliantly creative boys who suddenly have a whole world in front of them, a world they still see largely in movie form.
Subject Matter 3 / 4
Shock Factor 2 / 4
Production 3 / 4
Music 2 / 4
HWF rating 3.5/ 4