The Imposter plays on quite contemporary fears of children being snatched away from their parents or who simply go missing (high profile cases from the UK such as Madeline McCann, Shannon Matthews and Tia Sharp). However, this documentary focuses on the complex tale of the disappearance of Texan born Nicholas Barcley who disappeared in 1994 and then found in Spain, three years later.
It's kind of hard to explain what the plot of The Imposter is without giving away key details, because the less you know about the case of Nicholas Barcley, the better and more shocking the film will be. However, I'll give it a go...
The film starts in 1994, where a young blonde haired, blue-eyed Nicholas Barcley goes missing after leaving the house to play basketball and arguing with his Mother. What starts as a simple missing persons case that didn't even make the news had the whole of America stunned three years later when Nicholas is supposedly found in 1997... in Spain. The family are thrilled to bits and Nicholas' sister, Carey Gibson immediately flies out to Spain to bring him home where he belongs. However, as the title of the film suggests, many people start to believe that Nicholas is not telling the whole truth and they start to believe that parts of his story might be made up. It's not until the FBI and a private investigator become involved in interviewing Nicholas to get the truth out of him that the motives behind his story and the family's dark past start to come under the spotlight.
There... I tried. I really hope I didn't give any important parts of the plot away, because I went into watch this documentary without knowing anything about the case and I was completely shocked by what I saw. The story is so gripping and at times, crazy, that you will wonder just exactly how the people could have got away with what they did. Quite frankly, if this story was made into a Hollywood drama, it would be a tale that's pretty hard to swallow because of what certain people did (for example, the frankly rookie nature of the FBI agent who investigated Nicholas when he was brought back to the States.) But because the story is told through the documentary format, I found myself sitting their flabbergasted at what happened, rather than questioning how believable it was.
Besides the questionable nature of the professionals who were bought in to investigate Nicholas, the actions and motives behind the different family members themselves were so intriguing that after every twist of the story that happened, I was waiting to see what excuse or reasoning they were going to give to explain themselves. It's just a shame that the key member of the family who had the finger pointed at him the most, Nicholas' half-brother is now dead, so he couldn't defend/explain himself. However, the documentary does well in keeping the witness interviews to a select few members of Nicholas' close family to keep the tale as simple and straight-forward as possible. IT could have easily descended into talking-head interviews with classmates and second-cousins that Nicholas never met, all wanting to pop in and give their little thoughts on what happened, but the documentary keeps it to Nicholas' sister, his Mother, the FBI agent, the undercover agent and someone else (who I won't name, so I won't reveal the first twist that is revealed in the first five minutes of the film!)
However, it's not just the story that is captivating. Director Bart Layton could have easily relied on the compelling narrative of the story and filled it with some bland direction and still got away with a good film. But his style of filming and storytelling is just as compelling as the tale that he is telling. His use of match-cuts, rewind edits and composition of certain shots help drag the audience further into the story. He also does well with weaving the drama sequences that help tell the story of Nicholas in-between the talking head interviews. Basically, in short, Layton takes the idea of a simple documentary, that could have easily been an hour TV special, and takes it to cinematic level that is up there with the best crime drama films.
OK, that's all I'm going to give away. I really don't want to let on too much. because like I said at the beginning, the less you know the better. All I will say is that I've never sat so close to the edge of my seat (figuratively, not literally of course) while watching a film in the cinema. While some might argue that the film and the actual case of Nicholas Barclay itself doesn't have definite closure, I just love how many questions I had at the end running through my head.
That is the sign of a good film... That's the sign of a story well told... When you want to carry on talking about it long after you've seen it.
***** / *****
(My first 5 star review!)
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