Remember to forget

Unknown White Male taps into "reality"-era amnesia

By Jonathan L. Knapp

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The craze for reality-based entertainment has, coincidentally, coincided with an amnesia movie renaissance. Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — and higher-profile popcorn fodder like The Notebook and 50 First Dates — have seemingly brought more forgetful characters to the screen than at any point since the peak of film noir.

Thus, it was inevitable that a documentary about an amnesiac came along. It arrives with Rupert Murray's imperfect but frequently fascinating Unknown White Male, which — perhaps unsurprisingly, in the James Frey and JT Leroy era — has provoked serious qualms about ethics and authenticity.

All involved parties have repeatedly maintained the doc's validity. Nevertheless, certain aspects remain questionable. Unknown's subject, Doug Bruce, suddenly suffered from retrograde amnesia, in which all explicit memory (including knowledge of his identity and those of all his family and friends) disappeared. Medical professionals have given no solid explanation for this occurrence, and much of the film feels too perfect to be true: Would Bruce, a British expat living in New York, really forget who lives in Buckingham Palace but be able to name cities in Australia?

Murray, a documentarian who just happened to be an old friend of Bruce's, has admitted to restaging certain scenes for dramatic effect. The film gains its true power, however, from its use of already existing footage. While first trying to piece together his life, Bruce obsessively shot video, much of which ended up in the film. In this sense, Unknown White Male brings to mind recent docs like Capturing the Friedmans and Tarnation, films that used home movies with stunning results, creating an atmosphere of sheer dumb luck and uncomfortable voyeurism.

Unknown White Male never achieves the greatness of either of these films, but it does occasionally approximate their heights. Initial meetings with family and old friends — some shot by Bruce and others by Murray — ooze with anxious uncertainty. Murray goes a bit overboard when reenacting Bruce's point-of-view shots immediately following the accident, making mediocre attempts at surrealism. But Bruce is an engaging presence; his tentative first steps towards a new life, whether real or not, make for unusual and compelling drama. *

UNKNOWN WHITE MALE

Opens Fri/10

Lumiere Theatre

Act I & II

See First Run Venues for theater contact information.

www.unknownwhitemalemovie.com