THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS : Tuesday 11th September 2018.

'THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS' which I saw earlier this week is an American documentary film Directed by Tim Wardle. The film Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in January this year where it took out the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling. The film has generated widespread praise from Critics and audiences alike and has so far taken just over US$11M at the Box Office since its late June release in the US.

The story in question here surrounds three brothers born to a single mother in 1961. At the direction of the Louise Wise Services - a Jewish adoption agency (which is now defunct), the infant triplets were intentionally placed with families of different economic levels — one blue-collar, one middle-class, and one upper-class — which had each adopted a baby girl from the same agency two years previously. The separations were done as part of a scientific 'nature versus nurture' twin study to track the development of genetically identical siblings raised in differing circumstances and environments. The brothers were raised by their respective adoptive families as David Kellman, Bobby Shafran, and Eddy Galland.

The film opens with the talking head of 56 year old Robert (Bobby) Shafran in what is at first a feel good movie with him recounting his first day on campus at his new Community College somewhere in New York State. He was pleasantly surprised and somewhat taken aback when other students whom he didn't know from a bar of soap, came up and seemingly were genuinely pleased to see him, patting him on the back, asking him how his Summer break was, and with girls openly greeting him with welcoming kisses and hugs. However, the then nineteen year old Bobby's initial excitement quickly turned to confusion, when one of the students ventured into his new dorm, and called him Eddy. When Bobby turned around somewhat perplexed, the other student announced that he looked identical to another student from the year before who had made the decision not to return to College that year, hence everyone's surprise at seeing him again. That same student asks Bobby if by chance his birth date was July 12, and whether he was adopted, to which Bobby responds with a 'yes' to both questions.

Within no time the student packs Bobby into a car and they drive to the nearest phone box to call Eddy at his Long Island home, and the suspicions come home to roost at that point. The pair then drive the two hour journey to Eddy's home arriving late at night to discover that Eddy Galland and Bobby are indeed identical twins separated at birth. Their reunion after nineteen years quickly becomes almost an overnight media sensation having been picked up in a number of local newspapers and The New York Post. There is however, another twist to this story that turns it from 'amazing' to 'incredible'!

In just a few short days after the article appeared in The New York Post, Bobby and Eddy were surprised once more by the news that they weren't in fact identical twins but a set of identical triplets, with the third identical brother David Kellman joining the media frenzy after reading about it in The New York Post. The media went well & truly into overdrive with the three identical siblings being the darlings of the New York social scene, chat shows, print media articles and TV appearances. After all, what's not to like about three young fresh faced, good looking broad shouldered cheeky likely lads with black curly locks and a sense of humour.

The three new found brothers became inseparable and throughout the '80's rode the crest of the wave. The boys shacked up in a New York bachelor pad, opened a restaurant called the 'Triplets Roumanian Steakhouse' which turned over US$1M in its first year Bobby proudly announces, and they kinda broke into the movie business too by accident when they were stopped in their tracks on a Manhattan street and asked on the spot to appear in a scene in Madonna's breakout 1985 movie 'Desperately Seeking Susan'.

Following the euphoria of the '80's for the brothers, things began to take a darker turn. Disagreements ensued about work ethics, management style and company decisions surrounding the day to day operations of the restaurant. Furthermore, it also came to light that all three brothers had struggled with depression during their earlier teen years possibly brought about by their separation and the sense of being disconnected. Each spent time in psychiatric hospitals. Added to this, questions were being raised about the Louise Wise adoption agency, why they kept it a secret that each of the brothers had siblings, why all three were not offered up for adoption to a single family, and what about the fate of other twins or triplets born throughout the '50's and '60's that were similarly put up for adoption and have yet to discover their own siblings? And more questions besides.

It further turns out that the Louise Wise Agency was working under the auspices of The Child Development Centre and had deliberately separated the children at birth as part of an extended experiment conducted by the head of the centre, a Freudian specialist named Peter Neubauer, who emigrated to the US after WWII and who died in 2008. The Austrian born Jewish psychiatrist appeared to have been seeking to understand the connections between nature and nurture with the children’s progress, and the attitudes towards parenting of the adoptive parents being tracked and documented over a number of years, with the subsequent reports sealed away not to be opened until 2066. It seems that Neubauer took his secrets to the grave - for the next fifty years or so anyhow! Eddy committed suicide in 1995, with this still weighing heavily on the hearts and minds of Bobby and David who share talking head commentary throughout recounting the good times with the darker ones too, and the many as yet unanswered questions that just add to their frustration, anger and emotional turmoil.

Tim Wardle has here created an intriguing film that starts off as a feel good movie with the joy, excitement and emotion of three young men discovering each other as identical triplet brothers completely by accident, which then slowly burns away to reveal a real life horror story underpinned by scientific experimentation, human lab rats, lies, deceit and lives torn asunder. The story is so outlandish that you would be forgiven for thinking it a work of fiction were it not for Wardle's excellent research and reporting; the compelling nature in which this stranger than fiction story is delivered; the attention to detail and keeping it real; the big reveal and its true life aftershock factor and the questions it raises that will keep you thinking about it long after the credits have rolled. The two surviving brothers remain on a journey that to date has been 57 years in the making and still with no real closure - let's hope that they find it soon and can move on . . . finally!

'Three Identical Strangers' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-