Whenever I watch a movie or a documentary I try to avoid knowing much about what I am about to watch as humanly possible. Quite often I go by the score on rotten tomatoes and maybe the first line of the description. If both seem agreeable I might give it a go.
I knew the basic premise of this film: three men find each other later in life. You pretty much know this by the title and watching the first few minutes of the film. I also knew that here had to be much, much more than this. And boy.... wow. At various points of the film my wife and I would stop to discuss something because we could not wait. There was no shortage of empathy, outrage and disbelief as the story continued to be told. The final five minutes are absolutely breathtaking - I won't say more than that. That said, I would have left out the last minute of the documentary because it seemed like less of a take-away than what had just been revealed.
One side note: the way that the story is told is absolutely perfect. The director could have easily played games and made it more suspenseful than it needed to be.
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A very interesting story that proves true life can sometimes be stranger than fiction. A bit manipulative but still worth a watch to see this incredible story.
Interesting and reasonably well-made, but morally questionable in how it presents some of the material
Covering some of the same ground as Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein's book, Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited (2007), and Lori Shinseki's documentary The Twinning Reaction (2017), the film presents a bizarre stranger-than-fiction story, which begins as a light-hearted human-interest piece before taking several darker turns. A big hit at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the US Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling, Strangers is hotly tipped for Oscar glory, and has been almost universally well-received by critics (96% approval on Rotten Tomatoes at time of writing). However, for me, although the fascinating central story is undoubtedly gripping, there are just too many egregious problems in the telling, including an excess of distasteful sensationalism; a dearth of contextualising scientific information; overly simplistic ethical, moral, philosophical, and esoteric conclusions; stylistic drabness; and an overreliance on plot twists, which often forces the filmmakers to manipulate the material beyond what you would expect normal of a documentary.
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Cannot say that this is the type of documentary which I am usually looking for but somehow it got me interested. I was surprised that it got so dark probably because I did not know the background story and never heard about those triplets before. Unfortunately sometimes I felt like some emotions were fake or not that strong as it should be. Something like creators told them try to look more sad etc..
A bit too much emphasis on the sensationalist aspect. Wish they had just focused on the story and timeline and less on the "oh my God a surprise you didn't see coming! Dun dun dunnn!"
It's heartbreaking, a tough documentary and very sad to watch.
I did not expect to be crying so much after such a joyous two-thirds.
I disagree to a small extent that separating them lead to mental health issues, but teaching children good cognitive behavior (CBT) skills isn't exactly in our modern curriculum or even understood by parents. Hell, I understood it pretty well and attended classes with my daughter but couldn't really teach her what I knew. About this story, I thought (and wtf do I know...) children being let go to the State are more prone to the conditions their parents had -- even though I don't believe most are, "heritable." The human reward system is taught, or not -- barring any early trauma. I did think banging their heads after being separated was clearly linked to the withdrawal from the dopamine they got while together -- like what Dr. Gabor Mate says happens when infants are separated from their mothers (and takes several days to re-establish when re-united as a defense mechanism because the absence of that dopamine is interpreted as painful.)
I was not impressed by this. The producers played this up as an extraordinary set of events that brought these brothers together and a conspiracy that created the separation in their lives. The fact of the matter was that all three of them grew up in the same area, and two of them ended up at the same community college, where they found one another. When that happened, their story made the local papers, where the third brother found them. It really wasn't an amazing set of circumstances. It was a simple coincidence, and given that they all lived in proximity to one another, it was likely that they, or someone they knew, would've eventually crossed paths w/ one another.
As for the conspiracy, the adoption agency was at fault for not informing any of the adoptive families that these boys were part of a set of triplets. Apparently, they did this w/ multiple sets of multiple births. While the producers hinted that the study that involved these siblings was somehow in on this w/ the adoption agency, they never actually provided any evidence to back a claim of that type. Instead, they interviewed the two surviving brothers, and had them spout their ignorant opinions about social science research. It really didn't make them or the producers come off very well. They also made statements about how the researchers were disingenuous in what they were studying, but the fact was, they didn't know what they were studying, b/c no one ever filed any legal claim to the underlying data for the unpublished study.
This entire production came off as incredibly amateurish, unfinished, and really a not terribly interesting story. In actuality, the first 15 minutes of this documentary were interviews w/ people talking about how they couldn't believe how much these siblings looked alike. It was unnecessary and boring to watch. Aside from that, this very much felt like another of these manufactured documentaries that are all too common these days. These are stories that aren't clear-cut, so the producers create a story, instead of documenting it.
Dark side of humans, to be continued in 2066.......
This doc tells the story of three triplets separated at birth who accidentally find each other in their late teens. They do a whirlwind media tour showing off how much they have in common and eventually open a restaurant in NYC. Later, they discover that their separation was one of many. The adoption agency was a front for an experiment studying nature vs nuture. It is no coincidence that they each had an adopted sister of the same age and that the three families were each in a different tax band. The families recall visits and tests by psychiatrics throughout their early childhood. To this day, the records have not been released. The film also explorers mental health and the the separation anxiety twins and triplets may feel when separated in infancy.
Solid and emotional documentary that would be worth a rewatch in a few years.
The weird true story of a set of triplets, separated at birth, who accidentally bump into one other nineteen years later and become the talk of the town. It's a whirlwind, an outrageous example of reality trumping fiction, and we're wrapped up in the front page stories, endless media tours, club appearances and personal hoopla right alongside the three young men. When their unsuspecting adoptive families probe deeper into how / why this was allowed to happen, though, the story takes a surprisingly dark twist. As the adoption agency's tactics come under scrutiny and various shadowy figures are drawn to light, the film asks questions I didn't expect from what appeared to be a fluffy, feel-good reunion story. Rich and troubling, forthright and emotional, with a central moral quandary that's upsetting but also deeply fascinating. It's more than what you might think it is.
An incredible story that makes the viewer want to cry that people would do such horrible things knowingly.
Truth really is stranger than fiction.
This documentary is mind-boggling. I won't say too much so I don't spoil anything, its a must-watch documentary about real life events told by some of the participants of those events. It's a wild emotional ride.
Don't read about it before watching it, at most watch the trailer. Leave the (re)search for the moment after you've seen it.
Fascinating story. Well written / produced / directed. Captivating.
Shout by purgaBlockedParent2018-10-10T09:10:23Z
I was expecting some emotional documentary but story got very dark, very fast. JUST WOW. You need to see this one without knowing anything about it. It raised so many questions in my head. A MUST SEE.