#david kellman

Three Identical Strangers

2018. Documentary

By Tim Wardle

About: the lives of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, a set of identical triplets adopted as infants by separate families. 

Country: United States

I had mixed feelings after finding out that the triplets finally get their own documentary....

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(Hopefully by this point you’ve finished all 96 minutes of 'Three Identical Strangers’, the kind of person who isn’t bothered by spoilers, or are just deciding if you still want to keep watching.)

"It’s a little darker than a Disney movie.”

“Anybody could just walk around the corner and discover that [they] have a twin out there.” Though it comes at the film’s end, this final line of dialogue deeply transformed my entire viewing experience of Three Identical Strangers, from one filled with undeniable and complete empathy to one that was invasively personal, and nearly suffocating. More than evoking empathy, however, this powerful statement essentially frames the provocativeness that this film embodies by questioning one’s previously established beliefs on who or what should be sacrificed for the benefit of all.  

The greatest element of Three Identical Strangers is its intentional and intelligent narrative, that is how director Tim Wardle decides to tell the story of identical triplets Bobby Shafran, David Kellman, and Eddy Galland reuniting after being separated at birth only to eventually be torn apart by the very same cause that separated them in the first place-- an experiment which studied whether nature or nurture matters most in human development. 

In three distinct acts, audiences are literally taken along the triplets’ intimate journey as each new piece of information is presented to viewers in much of the same, linear way it was presented to the three brothers; we rejoice with them when they finally meet up with each other for the first time, we laugh with them as they discover their uncanny similarities, we scratch our heads in angry frustration along them as they question the motives of their adoption agency, and so on. This manner of linear storytelling, combined with the pacing of the documentary as a whole, enables even the most distracted and unsympathetic viewers to remain wholly engaged as they're forced deep into the catacombs of their emotions-- and only deeper into them as the story progresses.

Considering the undeniable immorality of the twin experiment, it is the seeming utter lack of empathy displayed by previous research assistants of the study, specifically Natasha Josefowitz, that affected me just as well. Josefowitz, a small but sprightly woman of 90 years, is introduced to viewers as she walks along her sunny beachfront home. She proudly shows off her array of prized possessions-- framed photographs of her and highly revered celebrities and political figures and several art pieces by Pablo Picasso-- before she impatiently asks the filmmakers, “When are we going to talk about the twin study?” Her joy and simultaneous indifference stands in stark contrast to the previous images we see of Bobby and David, who are distraught and heartbroken in talking about their and their brother’s estrangement and its detrimental effects that came at the cost of scientific advancement. I was almost personally offended on behalf of the triplets at this woman’s reaction, which, to me, felt like sociopathic disassociation. (Author’s Note: I recognize that my anger may be misdirected as she wasn’t in charge of this experiment, but Josefowitz for me represents the researchers and supporters of the study who remain unbothered by the damages the study itself has had on its subjects).

It’s hard for me to consider that the ethics of the 1950s are vastly different in comparison to the ethics of our present time. Still, it’s one thing for someone to recognize how ethical differences can change with time and adjust their feelings accordingly; it’s another thing for someone to recognize this difference and not care anyway. Natasha Josefowitz starts off her interview by saying she wasn’t a main researcher on the twin study, then defends the study by stating that the advent of psychology was more prominent than ethical concerns. Most disturbing of all, she attributes any anger someone may have upon discovering the experiment or its findings to people feeling upset about “how little influence they have, how little control they have.” She seems to remain unflinching at the fact that her shared mentality caused the destruction of the beautiful and potentially long-lasting familial relationship.

05/04/2020

My pal Mitto had been on at me for about a year and a half to watch this, so I saw it was on netflix, and watched it twice over the past two weeks : first by myself in my kitchen and second with my parents on a Thursday

- this is one of those stories that if you thought it up people would think it was way too outlandish and over the top. But it’s a true story, and that’s completely mad

- I think mark twain said that made up stories have to be believable and real life can do whatever the fuck it wants (or words to that effect)

- the bit at the beginning when bobby called eddy and they did his voice over the phone was AMAZING

- then fuck oh my god the middle section

- it was so stressful

- the music, all the realisations and the facts that we’d already been told but repeated in a different context were TERRIFYING

- the reconstructed stuff wasn’t overdone and worked well in tandem with all of footage that they already had, which was incredible by the way

- my family doesn’t have any videos or stuff from when me and my sister were kids so it was really cool to see all the films they had

- that in parallel with all the creepy study films they showed at the end from when they were literal children was Disturbing

- it was crazy seeing how young they all were when there was this whole media circus around them and it never really stopped

- like they were still doing interviews about what had happened decades after

- and the difference in all of them between those years was heartbreaking

- like initially they were so excited and it was such a crazy story and such an amazing time for all of them to be together

- then in the later interviews they get asked the same questions from ten years before about the strange similarities they discovered and one of them says that it’s annoying and unnerving when you think you have a unique thought, you tell someone and they say that one of your brothers just told them the exact same thing

- i had a micro extistential crisis when it finished and then I realised I wasn’t adopted

- and then I was like “OR WAS I”

- I did hear about this woman who saw it and she was adopted and the agency was Louise wise and she found her twin because of this film which is mad

- structurally I think it got a bit wavey towards the end and I wasn’t 100 % what their focus was and i feel like it could have been maybe twenty minutes shorter but it’s difficult to cut anything out of this

- neither of my parents had heard of this which was strange cos they were alive then and about the same age as the triplets

- guess they lived under rocks

- there was a bit that made me really sad when bobby was talking about eddy and you could tell he was a bit emotional but he finished the bit he was saying. Then someone behind camera said “Ok, thank you bobby” and he just went “oh, you’re welcome” and sat back

Note: This review contains unmarked spoilers. As always, I suggest you watch films knowing as little about them as possible. Everyone has at least one really good story in them. Because it’s important or they believe in it or just because they’ve practiced it to perfection, they can nail it every time, even if they couldn’t tell any other story on earth to save their lives. That’s the impression you get when Robert Shafran starts talking. He’s an affable man, adopted at birth, with a feel good story to tell about the time he found out he had two twin brothers. The story will take the sort of dark turns you only expect to find in yellowing old 1960’s paperbacks, but at that moment it is just a man with something to say.

Robert’s brothers Eddy Galland and David Kellman discover each other after Robert, at 19, enrolls at a college he’s never been to and on arrival finds that, like at the very best bars, everybody knows his name. His name isn’t David, of course, but too many people are sure they know him for them to be entirely mistaken. Then, coincidence of all coincidences, his new roommate recognizes him and knows there must be a mistake, as he’s sure his friend from the previous semester did not re-enroll.

That topples the dominoes, and soon enough the boys are together for the first time since birth. It is initially a joyous reunion. They move in the same ways, they have the same mannerisms, they finish each other’s sentences, they like the same types of girls. They are largely oblivious to the concerns of their parents, all of whom understandably want powerful adoption agency Louise Wise (now defunct) to explain why none of them were ever informed their children were triplets. The name is mentioned several times before we visit a recreation, and by the time we do the agency---a “New York institution” decades old and run by the city’s elite---has taken on an almost legendary quality, the way a menacing name is spoken and re-spoken throughout a fictional story before we are finally introduced to it. The Agency acts suspiciously, and we later find out way: the boys were divided up deliberately.

This takes place in 1980, and the footage of the time used, some of which was supplied by relatives, has that grainy feel of old camcorders that will never be seen by a generation used to videos looking better than real life. I am fond of it, it being the mode of recording in which I spent childhood, but here it takes on a double-edged importance. It starts out invoking a lost time when cars and houses were colorful and video was something to be saved for the important memories.

Soon, that fuzzy feeling is perverted as we learn of a labyrinthine science experiment that separated the boys for little apparent reason except curiosity. Respected psychologist Peter Neubauer, who died before the documentary was released, placed each child with a family of a different income level, allegedly to study the concept of nature vs nurture. Neubauer’s voice is heard on tape replying evasively to journalist Lawrence Wright, who first exposed the case in 1995. He knows people think this will be wrong, and cares about public perception, but because it is bad publicity, not because what he is doing is harmful. His aged assistant, Natasha Josefowitz, insists that in the ‘50’s no one had an issue with stuff like this. To use a not-so-scientific term, this is of course pure bullshit. Josefowitz thinks no one cares because the academics she spent her time with did not care. This is science that never asked if it should.

These revelations eventually lead to tragedy, heartbreak and struggle for the many subjects of the study. Yet what director Tim Wardle seems most interested in are the moments of humor, warmth and disquietude. Phil Donahue points out the brothers are all sitting exactly alike; they immediately react and all end up sitting in the exact same new position, a five-second clip that somehow has the quality of silent physical comedy. The men find and go to meet their birth mother, who is seen only as a photograph. They discover she struggles with alcoholism and is not much use to them, but she left me wondering. Their lives went three directions that became one; hers went in another. I imagined her, her teenage beauty faded now, vanishing back into the tangle of New York streets to resume whatever her life was. What would she think, if her head were clear, of the events around the children she produced? Asides like this remind me of one of my constant credos: we are all the main character in our own stories.

Everyone wants, above all, to believe their life has purpose. The movie concludes by letting us know that the study, sealed away until 2065 but shown to the subjects after immense public pressure, reached no conclusion. Imagine that the sum of your life was that you were found not especially useful. The story is currently being prepared for dramatic treatment, but as with a documentary on Mr. Rogers, it’s hard to imagine that format having the impact of Robert Shafran, looking into the camera, remaining silent for a moment as he is asked what he thinks about his life and those of his brothers, and then letting out a little laugh

Verdict: Highly Recommended

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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I’m not a big documentary gal. I guess I’ve always been drawn to fiction because the world is big and scary and I like knowing I can escape from it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to enjoy more things of the “truth is stranger than fiction” variety, probably because my country is a literal game show now and we’re all losers. As soon as I saw the trailer for this documentary, I was hooked. Three Identical Strangers is the story of Robert Shafran, Eddy Galland, and David Kellman - three identical triplets born in 1961 who were separated at birth and raised by three different families and were reunited by chance when they were 19. That story is wild enough as it is; it’s a heartwarming and offbeat human interest story with a feel-good ending. But the purpose of the documentary is to dig further into the story, to figure out why these triplets were separated at birth in the first place. And that’s where shit gets wild. How wild? Well...