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Thread: CATFISH (Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost 2010)

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    CATFISH (Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost 2010)

    Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost: CATFISH (2010)



    More about Facebook: the social network as deception

    Catfish, which has been promoted as a thriller but reads as a homemade documentary with clever cyberworld touches, like GPS and Google Maps and Facebook and YouTube images to show where the three guys are going and what's happening, reflects some of the heights and depths to which the social network can take its participants. But it also grows out of the contemporary ubiquity of film and other media platforms. Ariel "Rel" Schulman and Henry Joost, who like Rel's brother Yaniv "Nev" (pronounced "Neev") Schulman grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, are young filmmakers who like to photograph Nev's activities with a highly portable HD camera. Nev, 24, is a goodlooking, brash young photographer with a history of jumping into things and having adventures. These young men's lives are constantly committed to film as some people's lives (or masks) are always recorded on Facebook.

    The film is about Nev's headlong involvement with a family through Facebook. A girl of eight named Abby who lives in a little town in Michigan does a painting of a ballet photo of Nev's that was published in the New York Sun. Before he knows it he is getting packages with Abby's paintings in them. A friendly, almost coquettish relationship develops with Abby and also with her mother, Angela. Then -- by Facebook friending chats and instant messages and finally on the phone -- he "meets" Angela's pretty 19-year-old daughter Megan. Things between Nev and Megan become cyber-flirtacious, Facebook-romantic. Nev seems rather giddy. He Photoshops an image of himself and Megan close together, half nude: "sexting." They exchange erotic phone messages and call each other "babe." And Henry and Rel keep shooting Nev doing this. They also record some of the Facebook and YouTube stuff that spins off it.

    Finally when the trio are in Vail to shoot another film, they investigate a song Megan has performed for Nev that seems too good to be true. How could she have tossed it off to order so fast? They discover it's stolen from another source. There's something else that's fishy. Abby is supposed to be selling her paintings and getting amazing prices for them. She has her own gallery. They check out the gallery and view it on Google Maps. They find by contacting a real estate agent that the space is still vacant and for sale.

    We cannot of course reveal more, because this is a story of surprise revelations. As Henry and Rel approach the location in Michigan, they're terrified, because they don't know what weirdness they may encounter. Nev, the habitual risk-taker, eggs them on, unafraid. Eventually secrets come out, and we learn the meaning of the title.

    Catfish was a hit at Sundance and has won distributors whose sensational promotion angle and mainstream theater release has caused some backlash by audience members who don't think this is the thriller they've been promised and call it a fake. The filmmakers and Nev insist they are on the level and their interviews sound quite sincere. What makes the film seem too good to be true is that we still aren't used to people who shoot each other with such sophistication, and HD (but also low-res cameras) and wear mikes when they go to meet people, and can deftly use Facebook images to tell a Facebook story (more so than The Social Network, whose not-so-youthful creators, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, aren't really Internet nuts or Facebook fans). It's also true that in the road from Blair Witch Project to Paranormal Activity2, people have become cynical about movies that "look" authentic.

    When I watched Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here I started out thinking it was real and then decided it was fake. When I watched Catfish, I began sure it was fake and came to believe it was real. It doesn't matter. The confusion is part of the experience. Catfish is about how you can't know who people are when you meet them on the Internet. People use that to explore their dreams. The result tends to be heartbreak. Life is a dream and a dream of a dream, said Calderón. So is Facebook. Catfish is not a great movie like The Social Network, but within its limits, it's highly accomplished -- and highly relevant. All this is nothing new. Online dating and its pitfalls go back to the Nineties. But Facebook and new technologies take the complications to a whole other level.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 10-02-2010 at 08:47 PM.

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