The Imposter (2012)

Director: Bart Layton

Coming into this film I had never heard of this story about a man who steals the identity of a missing child, and that I think improved by experience of this film quite a bit. Director Bart Layton takes a fairly  fascinating story about manipulation and manipulates it in his own way resulting in an absolutely wild ride of a documentary filled with twists and turns. Layton controls the audiences reactions in the film very effectively using things like manipulating interviews with subjects and making it seem like the interview subjects know just as much as the audience. It's also no secret that this guy is not actually the missing child this family has been looking for, which creates unbearable tension during early sequences in which the man meets this family. We know this guy is going to be revealed eventually, but we don't know when and we don't know how and that keeps the audience on its toes at all times. And I'm not even going to mention some of the later twists that come out of nowhere.

The Imposter is not just a great sensory experience (the first time you see it at least), but not a bad intellectual one as well. At first the film is an example of the extreme power of confirmation bias, not accepting something that may be against your preconceived beliefs. We see such an extreme form of confirmation bias in that a parent doesn't even recognize her own son. But in the final act of the film things get a little more muddled and unfortunately the movie brings up a point (I won't spoil it) that I thought was astonishing while watching, but in retrospect is the only example of Layton going a little overboard when it comes to manipulating the audience. That brings up the fact that the film is astonishing when you're watching the first time without knowing any of the story, but thinking back about the story (and maybe a second viewing) diminishes the impact just a bit. Ultimately I can't imagine anyone not having an extremely engaging experience with this documentary that asks us all question about truth, lies, assumptions, and manipulations.

Grade: B