#robert shafran

[whatamigonnawatchtoday]

Three Identical Strangers

2018. Documentary

By Tim Wardle

About: the lives of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, a set of identical triplets adopted as infants by separate families. 

Country: United States

Language: English

[leighlim]

I had mixed feelings after finding out that the triplets finally get their own documentary....

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(Hopefully by this point you’ve finished all 96 minutes of 'Three Identical Strangers’, the kind of person who isn’t bothered by spoilers, or are just deciding if you still want to keep watching.)

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As I saw the film pop up on my Netflix feed (its not really a feed...is it? What could be a better term?) I instantly knew who it was about and was really delighted that Netflix has decided to add this to their title catalogue.

I first heard about them from another documentary that talks about the deep bond between twins and the study (separating twins) that was done by Viola Bernard without the consent of any of the adoptive families. Eddy and one of the other twins (is there a collective term to refer to triplets and twins?) were the ones that didn’t make it.

Yes....if you have seen the documentary...I understand why you jumped right to my commentary to find out if you’ll be feeling that same anguish as before. If you haven’t...and think you’ve missed out....well...not really. Because it’s also a part of this one.

I actually liked that it approached the conclusion in a different way: That ‘nurture’ definitely makes a big difference.

My takaway? I believe it is the job of parents to help their kids learn how to deal with the setbacks of life.

PS: Could that be a subject of a new Sci-Fi story? Not just having ‘parenting licences’....but matching the kids to the environment where they are going to be the most successful? So...at some point a kid gets to live with the Smiths...then at 10...go to live with the Jones’....oh....that’s quite the Pandora’s Box!

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HIGHLIGHTS:

The Triplets open a restaurant

David not blaming Eddie’s father for what happened

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My verdict of the film: 8/10

Link to the timestamp commentary: TBA

[watchingmoviesandshit]

Three Identical Strangers (2018)

[ryan-of-the-365-movies]

Three Identical Strangers Movies-at-Home Review

Note: This review contains unmarked spoilers. As always, I suggest you watch films knowing as little about them as possible. Everyone has at least one really good story in them. Because it’s important or they believe in it or just because they’ve practiced it to perfection, they can nail it every time, even if they couldn’t tell any other story on earth to save their lives. That’s the impression you get when Robert Shafran starts talking. He’s an affable man, adopted at birth, with a feel good story to tell about the time he found out he had two twin brothers. The story will take the sort of dark turns you only expect to find in yellowing old 1960’s paperbacks, but at that moment it is just a man with something to say.

Robert’s brothers Eddy Galland and David Kellman discover each other after Robert, at 19, enrolls at a college he’s never been to and on arrival finds that, like at the very best bars, everybody knows his name. His name isn’t David, of course, but too many people are sure they know him for them to be entirely mistaken. Then, coincidence of all coincidences, his new roommate recognizes him and knows there must be a mistake, as he’s sure his friend from the previous semester did not re-enroll.

That topples the dominoes, and soon enough the boys are together for the first time since birth. It is initially a joyous reunion. They move in the same ways, they have the same mannerisms, they finish each other’s sentences, they like the same types of girls. They are largely oblivious to the concerns of their parents, all of whom understandably want powerful adoption agency Louise Wise (now defunct) to explain why none of them were ever informed their children were triplets. The name is mentioned several times before we visit a recreation, and by the time we do the agency---a “New York institution” decades old and run by the city’s elite---has taken on an almost legendary quality, the way a menacing name is spoken and re-spoken throughout a fictional story before we are finally introduced to it. The Agency acts suspiciously, and we later find out way: the boys were divided up deliberately.

This takes place in 1980, and the footage of the time used, some of which was supplied by relatives, has that grainy feel of old camcorders that will never be seen by a generation used to videos looking better than real life. I am fond of it, it being the mode of recording in which I spent childhood, but here it takes on a double-edged importance. It starts out invoking a lost time when cars and houses were colorful and video was something to be saved for the important memories.

Soon, that fuzzy feeling is perverted as we learn of a labyrinthine science experiment that separated the boys for little apparent reason except curiosity. Respected psychologist Peter Neubauer, who died before the documentary was released, placed each child with a family of a different income level, allegedly to study the concept of nature vs nurture. Neubauer’s voice is heard on tape replying evasively to journalist Lawrence Wright, who first exposed the case in 1995. He knows people think this will be wrong, and cares about public perception, but because it is bad publicity, not because what he is doing is harmful. His aged assistant, Natasha Josefowitz, insists that in the ‘50’s no one had an issue with stuff like this. To use a not-so-scientific term, this is of course pure bullshit. Josefowitz thinks no one cares because the academics she spent her time with did not care. This is science that never asked if it should.

These revelations eventually lead to tragedy, heartbreak and struggle for the many subjects of the study. Yet what director Tim Wardle seems most interested in are the moments of humor, warmth and disquietude. Phil Donahue points out the brothers are all sitting exactly alike; they immediately react and all end up sitting in the exact same new position, a five-second clip that somehow has the quality of silent physical comedy. The men find and go to meet their birth mother, who is seen only as a photograph. They discover she struggles with alcoholism and is not much use to them, but she left me wondering. Their lives went three directions that became one; hers went in another. I imagined her, her teenage beauty faded now, vanishing back into the tangle of New York streets to resume whatever her life was. What would she think, if her head were clear, of the events around the children she produced? Asides like this remind me of one of my constant credos: we are all the main character in our own stories.

Everyone wants, above all, to believe their life has purpose. The movie concludes by letting us know that the study, sealed away until 2065 but shown to the subjects after immense public pressure, reached no conclusion. Imagine that the sum of your life was that you were found not especially useful. The story is currently being prepared for dramatic treatment, but as with a documentary on Mr. Rogers, it’s hard to imagine that format having the impact of Robert Shafran, looking into the camera, remaining silent for a moment as he is asked what he thinks about his life and those of his brothers, and then letting out a little laugh

Verdict: Highly Recommended

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Three Identical Strangers

I’m not a big documentary gal. I guess I’ve always been drawn to fiction because the world is big and scary and I like knowing I can escape from it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to enjoy more things of the “truth is stranger than fiction” variety, probably because my country is a literal game show now and we’re all losers. As soon as I saw the trailer for this documentary, I was hooked. Three Identical Strangers is the story of Robert Shafran, Eddy Galland, and David Kellman - three identical triplets born in 1961 who were separated at birth and raised by three different families and were reunited by chance when they were 19. That story is wild enough as it is; it’s a heartwarming and offbeat human interest story with a feel-good ending. But the purpose of the documentary is to dig further into the story, to figure out why these triplets were separated at birth in the first place. And that’s where shit gets wild. How wild? Well...

The brothers were separated at the discretion of the adoption agency their respective parents used, Louise Wise, a Jewish adoption agency in New York. They claimed no family would want to take three babies at one time, so they split them up to ease placement. Which, like, early 60s ideas about children and child development, ok I can see that. I just assume every decision made in 1961 was to get you closer to a martini and a cigarette. This first section of the film in which the brothers reunite and the mystery of their separation is first addressed is non-stop action. One revelation after another, it leaves you almost giddy at the joy we see in archival footage of all three boys, 19 years old, deliriously happy and with the world at their fingertips. You’re so bowled over by the joy, it’s hard to focus on “well, why did this happen, though?” Filmmaker Tim Wardle does an excellent job of leading us, bit by bit, into darker, more disturbing territory, though. As their tale progresses, an extreme debate of nature vs. nurture emerges, with horrific consequences. By the end of the film, the full scope of what happened to the triplets emerges, and it’s so shockingly, desperately sad that it’s hard to remember that reckless joy from the first 30 minutes of the film. It’s a deft piece of documentary filmmaking from Wardle, and my biggest hope is that it brings the brothers some catharsis and peace after all they went through.

Some thoughts:

The thing I most appreciated about this as a documentary was its clear vision for how to carefully lay out this absolutely bonkers, larger-than-life story. Too many documentaries are meandering affairs, or start as one thing but turn into another along the way without adequate care. Wardle does an excellent job laying out breadcrumbs, developing themes, and letting the story breathe. Really, really well done.

All of the archival footage of the triplets - and there’s a lot - is such a joy to watch, but the home movies of Eddy in particular feel like even more of a treasure. Getting to see the boys outside of the spotlight but still living their lives together gives a better sense of perspective of how much they lost by being apart for 19 years.

The triplets also have a brief cameo in Desperately Seeking Susan, which I have never seen but now must rent immediately just for the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

In spite of the dark territory it wades into, the movie is surprisingly funny. David especially is a loud, boisterous storyteller, and his anecdotes provide some of the biggest laughs.

For some of the early events, Wardle creates these sort of faceless reenactments - people dressed in c. 1980 clothing but we can only see the backs of their heads as they walk through the college campus where Bobby went to school and was confused for Eddy. We get to live that experience as Bobby, and follow him as he goes to meet Eddy for the first time, but you never see the reenactor’s face. It’s a neat trick - many of the documentaries I’ve seen recently use animation to portray these kinds of early memories, but I liked the visceral immediacy of this tactic. There’s not a flawless way to pull off this particular challenge in any documentary, I don’t think, but this came the closest for me. 

I would have paid so much money to go to the NYC restaurant the brothers opened, called Triplets. 

This is without a doubt the most compelling documentary I’ve seen this year, and maybe in my life (keep in mind, I don’t watch a ton of them, so y’know, grain of salt). The story of these brothers will stay with me for a long time, and I hope that this film will give them a version of peace that their lives have been missing for some time.

[porquevi]

"Three identical strangers" (idem) - netflix.

Sem rumo num sábado de noite, vagamos pelas listas dos streamings e esse documentário chamou atenção. Já tinha lido algo sobre, mas nada muito revelador, era apenas elogioso. Histórias de gêmeos separados fazem a festa em novelas brasileiras, será que essa real tem algo a ver com a ficção? 

depois de ver: ótima história e muito bem contada. bom roteiro e edição. nenhuma semelhança com novelas, mas muito em comum com filmes de ficção científica. 

[joneswumovie]

去年看過《三個一模一樣的陌生人》的預告片後，就非常期待能看到這部電影，儘管最終沒能登上台灣院線，但幸好可以在線上影城看到這部作品，喜歡紀錄片的朋友，千萬別錯過這部既奇蹟又溫馨又恐怖又哀傷的佳作。 完整文章：http://hatsocks1975.pixnet.net/blog/post/68072946

[everyfilmisaw]

Three Identical Strangers by Tim Wardle, 2018