In
case there’s any doubt about how movies inform our worldview, here’s a random
exchange I overheard at my job yesterday:
“What’s a Hare Krishna?”
“It’s those guys from f**kin’
‘Airplane!’ with the shaved heads.” (Just ignore the superfluous cursing; I
work in a restaurant kitchen.)
Cultural references like that one
aren’t an anomaly in 21st-century American life. But imagine if you learned
about humanity solely from watching movies in your little Lower East Side
apartment, even though — and certainly because — the planet’s biggest melting
pot was simmering on the other side of your front door. The six Angulo brothers
actually spent their childhoods in front of a television, confined to their
Manhattan home by a domineering father who nonetheless loved movies. They
eventually mustered up the guts to sneak out into their neighborhood, and this
gaggle of skinny, long-haired teenagers — outfitted like stand-ins for one of
their favorite films, “Reservoir Dogs” — caught the attention of documentary
filmmaker Crystal Moselle. Their serendipitous meeting has resulted in “The
Wolfpack,” an absorbing portrait of family, resilience, and the power of
cinema.
“If I didn’t have movies, life would
be pretty boring, and there wouldn’t be any point to go on,” one of the Angulo
boys says, a sentiment silently echoed by his brothers in a cozy scene where
they eat lasagna (another favorite) and sit transfixed by David Lynch’s “Blue
Velvet.” On their walls are crayoned posters devoted to many of the several
thousand movies in their collection. And when the Angulos
aren’t watching movies, they’re making them: transcribing the dialogue,
recreating the costumes — the Dark Knight outfit, for instance, is made of yoga
mats and cereal boxes — and filming on their parents’ camcorder. Moselle
deploys a split screen juxtaposing the original and Angulo versions, and the
recreations are funny and accomplished, if bittersweet. These movies exist
because the Angulo brothers were forbidden from having friends or getting fresh
air more than a few times a year.
The tale of the Angulo boys —
they’re all named after Hindu deities, though Moselle doesn’t identify them
till the end credits — begins with their father Oscar, a Peruvian man with an
obvious God complex (“My power is influencing everybody,” he claims) and anti-capitalism
views that conveniently prevented any gainful employment. By the time we meet
Oscar, however, his sons have ventured outside alone, and whatever control he
exercised has clearly dissipated. “The Wolfpack” portrays Oscar as a petulant
alcoholic, offering up passive explanations for what happened to his kids
without taking much ownership for his sole role in the abuse. But it’s through
their attitudes towards their father that the Angulo boys demonstrate a
surprising maturity considering the circumstances of their upbringing. “I felt
he overdid it,” one young man says of Oscar’s extreme overprotectiveness, an
understatement given the fact that one year they didn’t leave the house at all.
We also get to know Oscar’s wife
Susanne, a meek Midwesterner who home-schooled her bright children in response
to the paranoid Oscar’s dictates, and it’s apparent that she too has spent the
last couple decades under Oscar’s thumb. (One of her sons alludes to their
mother having it even worse than they did, though Moselle provides no
follow-up.) And as her sons spread their wings, Susanne begins to forge a
reconnection with the world as well, including a happy phone call to her own
mother that seemed a long time in coming. It’s initially heartbreaking to see
Susanne wrestle with a haunting blend of codependency, guilt, and her own
victimization, but the joy she exhibits at seeing her charismatic children
bloom in the sunlight is palpable.
There’s an early scene where the
Angulo boys prepare a meal for Moselle at their apartment, each of them
adorable in aprons but dressed for dinner, and we learn that Moselle is the
first guest to be invited over. Ever. It’s a tossed-off revelation that drives
home the fact that, with “The Wolfpack,” we’re witnessing something quietly
momentous, even life-changing. Moselle was able to film the Angulo family over
nearly five years, chronicling their journey from cloistered teens to
unfettered young men, despite the fact that when she met them on the street,
not long after they had first dared leave the apartment, the boys weren’t
allowed to talk to strangers. But then the Angulo brothers found out Moselle made
movies, and … action.
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2015.
