Unknown White Male
Unknown White Male DVD Review
Documentary may be a loose term for this film, given the friendship between the narrator and the subject. Refreshingly, we are spared the bloody expose so popular in today’s political documentaries, which are really little more than extended campaign advertisements– meant to eviscerate rather than educate.
Despite Murray’s confusing montage of “Super 8” home movies and stock nature and news footage, he introduces us to his leitmotif early: what if a person lost all past memory (episodic memory, the personal stuff) while still able to function normally, seeing the whole world as entirely new– being born again as an adult.
As the narrator states: “How much of our personality is determined by the experiences we’ve had, and how much is already there, pure us?” Murray attempts to explore the two sides of an argument as old as philosophy and religion themselves by following and filming the willing Doug Bruce for a year and a half; a Doug Bruce no longer able to remember the friend doing the filming.
With the help of Murray, Bruce is reintroduced to his former life: as a well off, retired (at age 30) commodities broker with at least two girlfriends, who both (you wonder about their motives) try to reclaim their old positions (the most recent one wins out), raising one of thousands of questions about the origins of our natures. For example, each of Doug’s friends/family members hope THEY will be the one to bring him back; like winning a popularity contest.
Something of a narcissist himself, Doug joins in with his own filming and narrating which makes him an increasingly unsympathetic character, in his selfish quest to find his memory. You begin to wonder if memory is required for compassion and humility, or if we’re just hardwired that way. Doug shows little evidence of either, though he acts on film with cloying politeness.
His dominant emotion, as he says it, is fear. Not knowing his own identity preys on his sense of wellbeing. He is forced to trust those trying to help him–not a easy proposition for someone, judging from the testimony of his friends, used to having his own way.
Though Murray bravely tries to keep him human, Doug slides further into the role of a subject for study; a science project.
A requirement of any documentary–interviews with witnesses and ‘experts’–are interspersed throughout the film, with cheerless bits of scientific news regarding Doug’s condition: “psychogenic amnesia”, or complete retrograde loss of all episodic memory, a rare condition. Other selective forms of amnesia –a week, a month, or at most, some years–are far more common. But a lifetime? Some bad luck here for Doug. According to the interviews on film, no one seems to know much about it.
Murray’s experts are mostly doctors, yet the most charming is a “philosopher” (apparently, in England, one can still can claim that title), which again returns us to the central question: are memories crucial to out sense of who we are?
Most likely, yes, if we take seriously Doug’s struggles. As his sister remarks, she “recognizes part of him, but he has lost his spark. I miss the old Doug.”
The new Doug also appears to have no sense of humor, or if so, a darker one. If you can believe it, the loss extends even to taste recognition. Can you even imagine chocolate mousse for the first time, at age thirty five? Or seeing the ocean? Or sex? Every sight, sound, feeling and taste was as though he just emerged from the womb. I only wish Doug had a more poetic nature (or is that learned too?). His intelligence seems to get in the way of real expression. He should be a joy to watch, like a toddler seeing a full moon for the first time. Instead, he seems like a Faust who traded away his soul.
Memory seems to determine how we interact with people. Doug watches people, studies their simple behaviors and tries to read their mannerisms. All this occurring to a lucid, articulate man who never stops commenting on his condition (no doubt with the prodding of Murray) until we see him like the precocious, yet innocent child tugging at our leg with incessant questions.
Doug suffers loneliness, but shows little sign of an expected battle with depression. His own curiosity seems to propel him onward. He, himself, becomes his biggest curiosity, pointing to that peculiar ability of humans to consider them selves from the outside.
Understandably, the Doctors interviewed preferred approaching the problem from an organic point of view: amnesia caused by a head trauma, or at least as a psychological aberration, caused by an emotional trauma.
Murray’s attempts to keep the viewer aware of Doug’s disorientation by a heavy mix of random visual images ranging from brain MRI’s to distorted views of the New York subway. He admits the film is low budget, but that doesn’t always translate to a poor one, at least in this case.
One fascinating idea explored by Murray appears when he sets up a reunion with Doug’s old friends back in England. The meeting is tense and forced, making you wonder, if you had to do it again, without memories, would you choose the same
friends? With Doug, things didn’t look promising.
When he is reintroduced to his father and sisters in Europe, the meetings are equally as strained, though the women seemed to handle it better than the men (perhaps something to do with their intuitive natures).
The doctors did seem to agree on one prospect for Doug: his memory would one day return. Oddly, as time went on (fourteen months) there seemed to arise an ominous feeling that the return of memory might put Doug even more at risk. What about the new life he was creating for himself? And the new girl friend?
Most of those around Doug agreed his personality had changed; but not so much that he became unrecognizable. Murray doesn’t make any personal conclusions which is why the film progresses from drama to science.
“Unknown White Male” is a surprisingly alluring reminder of how we take for granted the fascinating idea of SELF, and asks the question, how much do memories determine who we are.
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