Three Identical Strangers is a new theatrical documentary that I had little interest in seeing but finally went to tonight. I should have been interested though because this is a fantastic film. I only knew the basic premise (which is all I’ll reveal below) and I hadn’t seen the trailer so I went in pretty much blind. That’s the way to see it and I gather the trailer ruins a lot.
The documentary is about triplets who were separated at birth and adopted out to different families in the early 60s. In 1980, they manage to run into each other almost accidentally, make the newspapers, and become minor celebrities. The documentary portrays a lot of this through current interviews with the men, their wives, and family and in dramatic recreations. These are good recreations too… the film starts with one of them recalling going to college and, on the first day, running into people who kept saying Hi, Welcome Back, and giving him hugs (and kisses). He eventually finds out that his previously unknown twin had gone to the same school but wasn’t going to be back this year.
That setup felt amusingly like an episode of the Twilight Zone. A kind of science fictional bend on a real life occurrence. And that’s not a bad read on it since that’s just the start of a movie that gets increasingly surprising. And chilling. What the film reveals – and the masterful way it reveals it – is amazing and sometimes terrible and, if it wasn’t true, you wouldn’t believe it. The single problem I had with it was that they introduce speculation that dances a little close to conspiracy theory at one point.
Some of you who are a little older might even remember this story. Like I said, the triplets became minor celebs so there’s archival interviews of them sitting down on the Phil Donahue show or with Tom Brokaw. They turned their minor celebrity into a party down lifestyle in early 80s New York and then opened a restaurant. I don’t recall any of this but I would have been pretty young at the time.
I highly recommend this film and I recommend moreso that you go in blind. A film about identical triplets may or may not sound like a topic that would fascinate you… I can see it going either way… but I assure you that you will be intrigued and amazed at some of the stuff in the film.
Score: 90