Unknown White Male - Austin American-Statesman movie review

'Unknown White Male' is a forgettable documentary

By CHRIS GARCIA
Austin American-Statesman

And we thought amnesia was a fascinating ailment.

Think: a mind deleted, left defenseless to negotiate the trap doors and blind alleys of relearning life and the world. A waking nightmare of disorientation, completely Kafkaesque, if only you could recall who Kafka is.

Wellspring

'Unknown White Male'

1 out of 5 stars

Director: Rupert Murray
Cast: Doug Bruce
Run time: 80 minutes
Release date: Feb. 17, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for drug references and brief strong language.

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

Doug Bruce suffers retrograde amnesia, a radical, past-zapping strain of the neurological disorder. In July 2003, Bruce, a handsome Englishman in his mid-30s, found himself riding a New York subway to Coney Island, his head vacated of such unwanted clutter as his name, job, family, friends. The police helped him locate friends, including filmmaker Rupert Murray, who trained his video camera on Doug for what would become the never-quite-penetrating documentary "Unknown White Male."

In a corny flourish, it starts with Murray breathlessly dramatizing what it must be like to find oneself a wiped slate in a throbbing metropolis. He intimates an amnesiac's point of view with fish-eye lenses and hand-held wooziness, as a tuning fork thrums on the soundtrack. It could be the view of a noontime tippler.

That's about all the drama in this inconsequential profile of a man erased. Doctors explicate, friends compare the "newborn" Bruce to the old Bruce — the onetime bon vivant is slightly more serious and thoughtful now. His piecemeal reentry is the movie's slack arc, flecked with what look like re-enactments of his "first" fireworks show and visit to the ocean, where, bless him, he wept.

By not dipping into the murk of Bruce's mind, Murray's portrait avoids the insightful for the insular. Murray doesn't challenge Bruce by asking pointed questions, exploiting his pal's vulnerabilty for truly surprising material. His respectful distance is bad filmmaking. It undercuts the project, which plays instead like a home movie — flat, fuzzy, meaningful to few. Forgettable.