Loosetooth Reviews: American Animals (2018)

Truth is often stranger than fiction, not giant fighting robot or alien invasion kind of fiction of course, but the outlandish things that real people have gotten up to. Who would believe that a French acrobat would covertly tightrope walk between New York’s Twin Towers? or that a mute autistic child would learn to communicate using dialogue from Disney movies?

Well both of these things happened, and were documented in the films Man on Wire and Life Animated. Documentaries can help tell the most extraordinary tales that would other wise be laughed off as ludicrous. It’s why the Coen Brothers masqueraded Fargo as a true story so that audiences would except the events in their otherwise bizarre crime story.

While the documentary is no new medium, it’s been around almost as long as cinema itself, it has had somewhat of a resurgence in the last decade, not a week goes by without at least one getting a theatrical release, with just as many popping up on streaming services like Netflix.

What helps though is the ability to tell these unusual stories in a way that appeals to the largest demographic, and this is where the art of the docu-drama comes in. A symbiotic partnership of facts and reconstruction, and although it’s been showcased perfectly in recent years in films like the Oscar winning Man on Wire, it’s not something new, the first known example is Nanook of the North from 1922.

One man who seems to have mastered this craft is Bart Layton, who’s debut The Imposter, about a French man who posed. and was excepted as, a missing Texas teen, won him a Bafta for Outstanding Debut. The Imposter was also nominated for a Best Documentary Bafta and shortlisted for a Best Documentary Academy Award.

…and then we come to his second effort, American Animals, the story of a collective of college students who attempt steal a collection of rare books displayed at a campus library.

While The Imposter used dramatic reconstruction and Interviews with those involved to weave it’s narrative, American Animals takes it an extra step. The dramatic sequences here could easily form a compelling movie of their own, much like the flashback sequences of The Godfather Part II, and like that movie it’s how those sequences are presented that make it special.

The Drama is shot as well as any other heist movie, with a cast including Evan Peters (X-Men franchise) and Blake Jenner (Everybody Wants Some), intercut with interviews with the would-be crooks ten years down the line recounting the events as they remember them…and it’s here things get really interesting.

Layton starts blurring the lines between documentary and drama. In an early sequence Spencer, who’s campus library is the target, and his childhood friend Warren are talking about the books, Spencer telling Warren how easy it would be to steal these rare items. In the dramatic sequence the conversation jumps back and forth between a bar and a car, Spencer recalling the initial conversation happening in one place while Warren remembers it another way.

The lines blur further when Dramatic Warren has a conversation with his real-life counterpart about that same conversation, with Real-life Warren saying something along the lines of “if that’s how Spencer remembers it, that’s how it must of happened”.

It’s not often you see a movie that’s truly original, and like other original movies such as Moulin Rouge and Boyhood American Animals is sure to be nominated for an Oscar. But which one? Best Picture or Best Documentary? The lines are to blurred to call.

Have you seen American Animals? What’s your verdict? Let me know in the comments below.