I’m not a big documentary fan; I seem to prefer made-up stories, ones that can be manipulated to make points or showcase action that documents that reflect real life rarely can.  But many documentaries find aspects about our world that can astonish us or horrify us or inspire us with a depth that fiction can rarely reach, so they have their own merits.  Anyway, I’ve recently seen a wild documentary called Three Identical Strangers that I would not have believed had it been fictional.  It’s story is amazing.

Tom Wardle’s film follows three brothers whom you may have seen, if you were paying attention in 1980.  Evidently I was not, for I do not recall Robert Shafran going to college and discovering he has a twin brother, Eddy Galland, whom he never knew; or that they were soon joined by David Kellman, a third identical brother separated at birth.  Their reunion made national news; they opened and operated a restaurant in NYC called “Triplets” and spent some time as celebrities before the story’s novelty wore off.  The documentary shows what became of them afterward — and a bit more.

The more is what really drives this story.  Spoiler — it is revealed that the brothers were separated at birth as part of a psychological study to see how separated siblings would mature under different socio-economic circumstances.  That such a study exists is surprising; the fact that it was conducted without the subjects ever being allowed to learn of it is provocative or troubling at best, diabolical at worst.  Filmmaker Wardle is more than fair — he enlists a couple of people involved with the study to define and defend it, even as the duplicity of everyone involved, beginning with the adoption agency, becomes harrowingly clear.  And with the exception of a couple of points that seem deliberately whitewashed about the affair, this film points a very dark picture of human nature.

Tragedy strikes one of the brothers, which might have been avoided had they all been together, but then again, perhaps not.  As someone points out late in the narrative, the triplets were not truly identical — they each have their own personalities, interests, likes and dislikes.  The main point I took from the story is that these three people — and, startlingly, an unknown number of other sets of twins — were actively deprived of their siblings so that an ambitious psychologist could make a pseudo-scientific study of them.  Maybe such a study would have (it’s never been published) some scientific value, but methinks the cost is way too high in terms of what it has done to these people and their families.  I wouldn’t have believed this story if I hadn’t seen this movie.  ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2.  23 August 2018.