The Woflpack review
The Wolfpack review
The Wolfpack tells the true story of a group of children, and their mother, who have been confined to their 16th story apartment in New York’s Lower East Side for 14 years. In their own words, they were not allowed out of that apartment for more than a few closely monitored days each year, and in one particularly year, they didn’t leave it at all. Their father Oscar controlled the only key to the apartment, with their mother home-schooling their children’s education with their life experiences being lived through movies which they would watch and re-enact in their bedrooms.
The Wolfpack hails from acclaim at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where it was awarded the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize. Director Crystal Moselle takes us on a journey through the lives of this fascinating family as they start to experience the world first-hand, following an opportunistic event when the eldest of the children, Mukunda, finally leaves the family home in a Halloween mask when he was 15. He is arrested just a few hours later, and sent back to his home. A chance meeting a couple of years later where Makunda and his brothers were spotted by film student Moselle, wearing dark glasses and Reservoir Dogs-style suits walking down First Avenue in New York, sparked this feature and the fascinating story of the Anguo family.
The Wolfpack review
Where most people use film as a form of escapism, the reverse is true here. Movies and TV shows came first for these children, with reality only a vision from a dimly lit apartment many stories up in one of the toughest housing projects in New York City. The Wolfpack is an intriguing documentary that is sound-tracked by a subtle, though eerie music score, familiar dialogue from popular movies, and heartbreaking monologues from mother Susanne and her seemingly trapped family as they tell their tale. Father Oscar remains remarkably silent throughout, his only contributions an apparent obliviousness to his controlling parenting over the previous decade and a half. The children’s love of film shines through in the many scenes that get reenacted, some with amazingly precise accuracy, emotion and indeed very talented acting.
A stand-out moment comes towards the end where the group visit a movie theater in the city for the first time to an apparent screening of David O’Russell’s The Fighter. Their looks of glee and excitement are only overshadowed by the thought of sadness for them and the sheer irony that their choice is to sit in a darkened room watching a film as they discover this outside world.
Never afraid to shy away from the dark truth behind this group’s claustrophobic lives, Moselle’s film turns out to be one of the year’s most absorbing, frank accounts of a remarkable, though sad existence in today’s modern world.
Sincerely recommended.
The Wolfpack review by Paul Heath, August 2015.
The Wolfpack is released in UK cinemas on Friday 21st August, 2015.
