plug: The Wolfpack (2015)

“If I didn’t have movies, life would be pretty boring and there wouldn’t be any point to go on, you see?”

What if cinema raised you?

Whenever I’m feeling cynical about film, I watch The Wolfpack, a 2015 documentary by Crystal Moselle about the Angulo brothers, who grew up confined in a New York housing project apartment for fifteen years and survived by escaping into movies.

“If I didn’t have movies, life would be pretty boring and there wouldn’t be any point to go on, you see?” says Govinda Angulo, one of the brothers. “So movies opened up another world.”

What do you do when another world opens up within the four walls that are home and a prison? You write every line of dialogue in Pulp Fiction by hand and memorize the words with your brothers. You make a Bat costume out of cereal boxes and yoga mats and learn Batman and Bane’s fight choreography in the living room. You relive the most iconic moments in Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, The Dark Knight to learn language and identity.

The brothers’ need to escape comes from their fifteen-year confinement at the hands of their abusive dad, who has raised them to fear society and to never leave the apartment. They are friendless and homeschooled by their mother, also exiled from the world and whose sole purpose is to care for her children so they can receive compensation from the city.

One day, after watching The Dark Knight, one of the brothers decides to escape, and everything changes.

Although the film initially feels like a portal into a dark, cult-like family, Moselle’s warmth as a filmmaker and compassion for her subjects (who begin as her friends) shines through as she documents the brothers for nearly five years as they learn how to interact with the real world.