Catfish

            Catfish assures us that we need people to keep us on our toes so that our lives are not mundane monstrosities.  The film is a 2010 documentary with real people and not actors.  The main focus in the film is Yaniv Schulman.  The film was directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.

            The film takes place in the present and introduces us to a professional photographer, Yaniv Schulman or Nev for short, who is being filmed by his brother, Ariel Schulman, and friend, Henry Joost, who are filmmakers.  The three live in New York.  Ariel and Henry are interested in documenting Nev’s relationship with Abby, an eight year old artist, and her family.  Nev’s relationship with Abby and her family expands through interactions on Facebook.  Nev develops a personal relationship with Abby’s sister, Megan, but suspicions on Abby, Megan, and their family do not arise until Megan sends Nev a song she supposedly wrote and sang for Nev.  The rest of the film centers on finding out whether Abby, Megan, and their family are real and on meeting them in Ishpeming, Michigan.

            There are a few distracting elements in the film.    For example, there are several scenes where the camera seems to shake uncontrollably.  This can cause the viewer to get lose focus on the action or become sick; however, for this type of film, the shaking camera was mostly impossible to avoid because the cameramen were shooting with handheld cameras.  Another example of a distracting element in the film is the transitions.  The transitions consisted of snippets of Facebook updates from Nev, Abby, Megan, and their family and friends but displayed as if the camera was placed right in front of the computer monitor which made the pixels very visible.  This is distracting because we do not usually look at the computer up close; moreover, the pixels can deter our eyes from what we should be looking at and can take us out of the viewing experience of the film.  The last example of a distracting element in the film is the huge amount of noise present in the shots.  Since Nev’s friends, who are recording the documentary, are introduced as professional filmmakers, one would think that their cameras might be able to record better quality; furthermore, if one has experience with editing technology, then one also knows how easy it is to insert a noise filter during the post production process.  Also, at the end of the film when we get the last interviews with Abby’s mom and dad and Nev’s final reactions to the situation, the shots are very clean and noise free.  The issue with the noise distraction, though, might bother someone with filmmaking knowledge and might not concern the average viewer at all.

            The film had its good moments, even though it  left an overall weird feeling.  For example, we do feel for Nev’s situation, especially at the end of the film.  The final scenes that feature Nev’s final reactions to the situation are very realistic and seem very human as compared to how he reacts in the beginning and middle of the film.  Another example is that when we actually learn about who Abby and her family are, they too seem normal and realistic unlike their Facebook counterparts.  The weird feeling here comes from how the Facebook counterparts were originally created.  Another example of a good moment from the film is one of the messages that it sends to its audience.  Abby’s dad explains that we need people in our lives to keep us sort of skeptical so that we will not be stuck in a comfortable but boring life; however, we are also left with an odd feeling because the situation that had stemmed from Abby’s family never seems to get entirely resolved, and the audience does not want the same situation to happen to them even though the film promotes this.

            Overall, I will give the film a 3 out of 5.  There were distracting elements, but these were mostly technical and post production issues.  There were also good parts to the film, but these left odd feelings as well as good feelings.