Film

We’re faced with a dilemma in reviewing Dear Zachary. We really, really want you to go see it. We want to tell you how powerful and moving it is. We want to make you understand how it made us weep the first time we saw it, at the South By Southwest Film Festival, and again this week as we rewatched it for this review.

The trouble is that it’s difficult to discuss this documentary without ruining it, because part of its power comes from revelations that occur along the way.In the criticism biz, this would normally be the moment to issue a “spoiler alert,” freeing us to reveal key information in the service of a richer discussion of the film. We’re not gonna do that. Instead, we’re going to talk about the how of Kuenne’s accomplishment while withholding most of the what. As much as is possible, this review won’t spoil the key twists so you can have the experience we did. But—to borrow a rhetorical device Kuenne uses to great effect—we’ll come back to that later.

Here are the bare-bones facts that we can reveal. In 2001, Kuenne’s childhood friend Andrew Bagby, who was finishing his medical residency in family practice, was murdered. All the evidence pointed to Bagby’s former girlfriend, Shirley Turner. She’d displayed creepy, obsessive behavior during their relationship and after their breakup, like placing dozens of calls a day to Andrew’s cell phone. As the police were preparing to charge her, Turner fled to her native Canada. The United States began extradition proceedings. Meanwhile, documentary filmmaker Kuenne set out on a cross-country journey to talk to people who knew and loved Andrew Bagby. Kuenne simply wanted to learn more about his childhood friend’s last few years of life and to preserve people’s loving memories.

Then, in a twist given away by the title of the film, Turner announced that she was pregnant with Bagby’s child. Kuenne began reimagining his project as making a record of Andrew Bagby for the son who would never know him. Instead of the Hallmark card you might anticipate, Kuenne has crafted a work that is equal parts legal procedural thriller, howl of grief and call to arms.

Defying the stereotype of documentaries as slow-paced, Kuenne moves at a breakneck speed, re-creating the whirlwind confusion that we often feel upon receiving unexpected bad news. He begins by trying to sum up Andrew Bagby in a handwritten letter: “Your father was…” Kuenne then cuts to a rapid-fire montage of people’s descriptions: “Opinionated…charismatic…I have to say he was short…a giant of a man…” On words like selfless, kind, caring, Kuenne doubles and triples the voices, since certain adjectives are used by many of Bagby’s friends.

The first shock of the film, in its first minute, is just how many people are talking. It’s a cliché to say that someone’s life touched many people, but in the case of Andrew Bagby, it’s absolutely true, as Kuenne makes clear. By the end, Andrew Bagby makes George Bailey look bush-league.

The initial flurry of voices carries us forward until first one and then a second person breaks down in tears, and the montage comes to a halt. This is exemplary of Kuenne’s approach; where many documentarians rely on the long take, he edits together bits and pieces to tell his story for maximum emotional impact.

The word that comes to mind is manipulative, and it may be a fair charge. Kuenne works his viewers up into an emotional frenzy through editing and music (Kuenne not only directed and edited the film; he also composed the plaintive score). And Kuenne withholds certain facts for dramatic effect as the story unfolds

So yes, Kuenne manipulates our emotions, but film is a manipulative medium. Despite the persistent confusion some people have about what documentaries do, they are not intended to be (and in fact cannot be) neutral reportage of facts. The documentary filmmaker shapes our views by what is shown, how it is filmed, who is interviewed and how the material is edited. Docs should be judged not on their neutrality, but on their persuasiveness and their intellectual honesty about the inevitable emotional manipulations.

That brings us back to spoilers. Some twists deserve to be kept secret, because the twist is central to the experience of the film. Imagine the shock of early audiences of Psycho, who had the thrill of not knowing that top-billed Janet Leigh would be killed so early in the film. (To anyone who didn’t know that by now, we sincerely apologize.) Recall the frustration of seeing The Sixth Sense after the twist had been revealed. But not every twist deserves to be treated as sacred. As reviewers, we couldn’t discuss films in any detail if we couldn’t mention, for instance, that there’s a police cover-up at the heart of Changeling. We felt similarly about the opening 20 minutes of Sex and the City, though we took a drubbing from some readers for that decision. As critics, we always weigh the costs and benefits of revealing facts.

Dear Zachary earns our discretion, for the simple reason that we want you to experience this movie the way we did, as a series of emotional shocks. Just take our advice and bring tissues. You’re going to need them.