Protagonist

I was a big fan of Jessica Yu's previous film, "In The Realms Of The Unreal" about outsider artist Henry Darger. There she used animations of Darger's creepy outsider art drawings to great narrative effect.

Challenging herself to do the same with this film, she's incorporated four moderately interesting (and i do mean moderately) stories of four disparate men and tried to merge them into a 90 minute Greek tragedy with cheesy puppetry and Greek inspired title sequences: "CATHARSIS", "CERTAINTY", "CHARACTER", "COST", "DOUBT"....etc. I would've settled for just one "PRETENTIOUS". The puppets at times had me laughing out loud (Watch for the bank robbery sequence with the quivering shaking teller puppet. It belongs in Team America, World Police.

I much prefer the work of Errol Morris, whom I think Ms. Yu lifts heavily from.

Do yourself a favor, and rent a great film like "The Thin Blue Line" or "Gates Of Heaven" or "Standard Operating Procedure". This will seem pretty thin after those.

I thought about making the title of this review "One of the ain't' like the other one". The subjects of the interviews in this film are a terrorist who turned some of his co-conspirators in, a bank robber that tried to kill his father, a repressed homosexual who made a living convincing other people that they too can be straight, and....a guy that took some Kung Fu Lessons. And his first teacher was a jerk. I'm serious. That's his story. He was a bit of a nerd, so he got into martial arts and he wound up studying with a really intense guy that was...less than dependable? Prone to errant behavior? That's about as dramatic as it gets with him.

I gave this movie a 5 out of 10 because 2 out of the 4 subjects were interesting. The other two were not. The Kung Fu student probably didn't give them much to work with. But the gay televangelist might have been compelling if his story were not so predictable. But it is.

She should have found two more subjects to make a better movie. The production values were good and the narrative conceit of Greek tragedy told through puppets had great potential. But the impact of the movie is blunted by the inevitable reaction of "Why was the kung fu guy included in this?"

Simply a wonderful documentary.

This film is a simple, humble, intelligent and beautifully crafted work of art. A must see for everyone who is interested in people stories about human transformation and growth of the individual.

The careful selection of the 4 interviewees (the protagonists), the use of Greek mythology and puppetry leaves the viewer astonished and amazed right up to the end. I can not stress that the film's brilliance is in its constructiveness and the narrative's simplicity.

A small sensible documentary that one could class along such other great documentaries as Être et Avoir, Capturing the Friedmans, Titicut Follies. Definitely,One of the great documentaries of the year!

It is unnecessary to say more, watch be amazed, moved and touched.

I saw the movie at the sundance film fest.I must say I missed a small part of the beginning but was still able to get the idea and form an opinion.I felt the balance and nature of the feelings the 4 people lived through.I think we all have been faced with things we consider pivotal moments in our lives this film addresses the extreme moments of 4 men who were faced with life altering decisions in some peoples eyes the decisions were wrong but I think the point was wright or wrong we need to look at the whole situation to be a victim or deal with the issue it all depends on the persons will and how guilt can motivate you to sink or swim.

It is about various completely separate men battling hero worship to become their own heroes in their own lives, since no one else seemed to them to want the position. Some of them worship God and Jesus. Some of them worship Cane on Kung Fu. Some of them worship their father. And they all have to somehow fight betrayal and cruelty and find the strength to be completely and purely honest with themselves. Apparently, this parallels Euripidean dramatic structure, as many actions narrated by the film's subjects are recounted by expressive wooden puppets on a puppet-sized Greek stage, and these men's stories do not necessarily display clear-cut origins to motivate things, episodes of the plot are spaced out and the activity displaced, though working as crucial aspects. The nature of what these men experience and become lies beyond the clarification of science and leans toward the chance turns of the cosmos and civilization alike, the inexplicable compulsions which continue to function regardless of common insight and the impartial alignment of rationality.

The notion of a protagonist here is not one of a hero who takes it upon himself to, as he always has and will, save the day. It is of a more personally inspirational nature than that. All these subjects were victims at some point. Whether they become any sort of savior or hero in society or not is no matter because they become that for themselves. Actually, society is in every case the antagonist by some degree of separation.

I do not know how Jessica Yu, the writer-director of this purely original and very creative documentary, found her subjects, whether or not she had already known something of their lives enough to see that they applied to her theme, if she knew some of them beforehand, if she conducted interviews with various prospects before finding those who applied the best and thus narrowed it down to them or what. It is the approach behind the subjects of any documentary, but the central theme here is purely cerebral, nothing you can put out an add for or scout a certain region for. It requires an extra amount of shrewdness and insight. Yu's emotionally cued interspersions of puppets on a stage, as well as all other visual parallels, depend on the circumstances of each of them. Errol Morris would be proud of her achievement.

What it becomes for us---as we become enthralled with each episode, are then taken out of it all for a second when the film shifts to another of the "protagonists," and then get enthralled all over again---is a meditation on the idea of a story's central character. It takes us awhile to put together all the pieces of a given one of them, and once that happens, we don't have to like what we see. So why do we continue to look? Because we hope for a change, whether for them or their situation. It is not their responsibility to make sure we like them, but to be honest with themselves about who they are and what they want, so that we can fully understand why we like them, or why we don't. Personally, I found something endearing about each of the four men. It's not a matter of how well a protagonist meets our standards; it's a matter of exercising our ability to accept.