The Wolfpack **** (2015, Bhagavan Angulo, Govinda Angulo, Jagadisa Angulo) – Movie Review

First-time director Crystal Moselle‘s documentary about the six Angulo brothers is the most impressive and essential personal biography since Amy.

Locked in safe from the supposedly harmful outside world by their parents at home in the family’s cramped apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, they learn about that world through obsessively watching and copying movies. The brothers spent their childhood re-enacting their favourite films such as Reservoir Dogs and The Dark Knight, using elaborate homemade props and costumes.

Finally, at the age of 15, one of the brothers manages to escape, though initially with tricky consequences, and eventually they succeed in liberating themselves. The boys are remarkably articulate, especially considering their reclusive, strange lives. They still live in the tiny flat with their withdrawn hippyish mother, who officially home-schools them, and the father they don’t talk to any more. The parents are interviewed too, but are far less forthcoming.

The dad’s passion is movies, which he’s handed on to the boys. Their acting skills, re-enacting movies are remarkable, as are their props and costumes, and one of them has now got his work start in a film studio.

The movies – and their talent and intelligence – are the boys’ salvation. They seem to have survived and even prospered from their weird upbringing. They are intelligent, charming, creative and funny. It’s a great story, extremely well told by Moselle, whose documentary won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize (2015) and Best Documentary Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2015.

It does however leave a great number of questions unanswered, raising more issues than it can safely handle. But that can be food for thought and discussion after seeing the film. Apparently, Moselle just saw the boys in the street, started filming and followed their story. It’s amazing what you can do with a camera, and just how far it can take you. To Sundance, the local multiplex and a film career. Ah, the power of the movies!

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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