movie thoughts: Three Identical Strangers (2018)
Look at me! Only a week into 2019 and I've watched two movies! I'm hoping to get through two more this weekend because I need to return everything Monday.
Anyway, wanted to give some brief, non-spoilery thoughts (though if I go into spoilers, I hide them under a cut, so you have been warned!)
This had been on my to-watch list for awhile, all I knew about it was what was on the cover and that it had fantastic reviews.
It is a documentary about three guys who find out they were triplets separated at birth! There is SO much more to it, but it is best to just watch the film and see everything unfold, piece by piece. Every time I thought this thing was coming to a close, some new bit of information came out that kept me in my seat.
I got the DVD from the library, doesn't look like anyone has the streaming rights just yet, but it is worth the rental price.
SPOILERS under the cut, for sure, DO NO CLICK if you haven't seen it!
Seriously, don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet!!!
I think the most disturbing part of the whole thing was the little Austrian woman who just kind of shrugged it all off as "eh, it was the 1950s! SCIENCE!" which is probably true. We were only just beginning to really understand child development and mental health at that time, so perhaps the idea of splitting up siblings didn't seem so upsetting. And it was an experiment so they couldn't tell the parents because it could alter the results.
Which is why I don't buy the one psychologist who was a part of the study as a grad student who said it was actually focusing on parenting. I think that is what they told him. But I feel like the things being observed were either just the nature/nuture thing OR mental illness.
Just so many ethical questions. I mean, look at how many people's lives this study manipulated! Every family had already adopted ONE child and this was their second. So you have, at least, a father, mother and two children in each family who have had their entire childhoods thrown into question.
And the most frustrating thing is that nothing was released. Was it because of a fear of lawsuits? Or did someone else release similar findings without doing this kind of experimentation? Or was it something worse? We will never know because all the people involved are gone.
And the whole thing being focused just on Jewish kids. The director said he tried not to focus on that too much, he wanted it to just be about the human issue, not turning it into a political/religious issue. BUT they did work with an adoption agency that was exclusively for Jewish people...WHY? That makes me worry on a whole different level.
Because it is a documentary, so many things are left unanswered because the people who know the truth are either dead or have buried the records. And if viewers feel frustrated by this, think how upsetting it has to be for the people whose lives are directly effected by all of these dangling threads.
This entry was originally posted at https://orangerful.dreamwidth.org/1294207.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Anyway, wanted to give some brief, non-spoilery thoughts (though if I go into spoilers, I hide them under a cut, so you have been warned!)
This had been on my to-watch list for awhile, all I knew about it was what was on the cover and that it had fantastic reviews.
It is a documentary about three guys who find out they were triplets separated at birth! There is SO much more to it, but it is best to just watch the film and see everything unfold, piece by piece. Every time I thought this thing was coming to a close, some new bit of information came out that kept me in my seat.
I got the DVD from the library, doesn't look like anyone has the streaming rights just yet, but it is worth the rental price.
SPOILERS under the cut, for sure, DO NO CLICK if you haven't seen it!
Seriously, don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet!!!
I think the most disturbing part of the whole thing was the little Austrian woman who just kind of shrugged it all off as "eh, it was the 1950s! SCIENCE!" which is probably true. We were only just beginning to really understand child development and mental health at that time, so perhaps the idea of splitting up siblings didn't seem so upsetting. And it was an experiment so they couldn't tell the parents because it could alter the results.
Which is why I don't buy the one psychologist who was a part of the study as a grad student who said it was actually focusing on parenting. I think that is what they told him. But I feel like the things being observed were either just the nature/nuture thing OR mental illness.
Just so many ethical questions. I mean, look at how many people's lives this study manipulated! Every family had already adopted ONE child and this was their second. So you have, at least, a father, mother and two children in each family who have had their entire childhoods thrown into question.
And the most frustrating thing is that nothing was released. Was it because of a fear of lawsuits? Or did someone else release similar findings without doing this kind of experimentation? Or was it something worse? We will never know because all the people involved are gone.
And the whole thing being focused just on Jewish kids. The director said he tried not to focus on that too much, he wanted it to just be about the human issue, not turning it into a political/religious issue. BUT they did work with an adoption agency that was exclusively for Jewish people...WHY? That makes me worry on a whole different level.
Because it is a documentary, so many things are left unanswered because the people who know the truth are either dead or have buried the records. And if viewers feel frustrated by this, think how upsetting it has to be for the people whose lives are directly effected by all of these dangling threads.
This entry was originally posted at https://orangerful.dreamwidth.org/1294207.html. Please comment there using OpenID.