THE IMPOSTER!!

The Imposter!!

Key Cast: Frederic Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide, Nicholas Barclay.

Director: Bart Layton

Genre: Biography Documentary

Themes: Family, Deceit, Mental Health, Secrecy 

Release: August 2012

Box office: $1,999,277.

Key Scene:

A key scene in his film is shown at the beginning when we see the imposter trying to get into the children's home. In the scenes where he is talking about trying to get into a foster home he says 'it's all he wants'. He is a 23 year old man trying to pass himself off as a young teenager and trying to find a children's centre to live in. This is an important scene because it helps show why the imposter was doing what he was doing. The audience can understand that he wants t be a child again and get a second chance, so the audience is aware of why he goes to so much effort to try and prove himself to be a child. From this the audience also gets the idea that he had a bad child hood and can assume that he wasn't loved or was abused. This doesn't make the audience fully sympathise with the imposter but just makes it easier to understand whey he put himself in the position that he is in. The fact that he is a 23 year old man trying to be a child also suggests some mental health issues which makes the documentary more tense as we are not quite sure as to what he could do next because so far everything we know about him is a lie.

Another key scene within the film is the big reveal towards the end of the film where the audience's perception of Nicholas Barclay's family changes. In this scene, we see the imposter explain why he thinks his plan to take on the identity of Nicholas worked. What is so important about this scene is that from the beginning of the film the audience sympathises with the family and questions the imposter. Towards the end of the film the audience is left astonished and questioning what could have happened. The reveal makes the film gripping for the audience as it goes against what the audience already knows and makes the story seem even more shocking.

Key Micro-features:

Two key micro-features in this film are cinematography and editing. These two are important because they were used as a way of showing the audiences the emotions of the real life characters in the film. Throughout the documentary it kept cutting back to the face of the imposter whilst the family was talking about Nicholas and what the imposter did. This is important because it made the film have a more twisted edge to it. The audience saw close ups of his face when he had a mischievous smile on his face (cinematography(zoomed in on face to clearly show the different emotions that the imposter felt telling his story)) then quickly cutting back to the story. This could insinuate that the director was trying to show how easy it was for Frederic to get in to the family's life and how he was always scheming and planning his next move. The two micro-features worked together to help show the imposter to seem unstable but also scary as in the majority of the film no one really knew who he was. The quick transitions and close ups help put the audience on edge and pull them into the story as they wanted to see why he went through all that trouble to do something so unthinkable.

Comparable:

A similar film to this is 'The Pretty One' (2014). It is about twin sisters that get in to a car accident where one of them dies. The similarities between this film and The Imposter is that they both have characters that take on someone else's identity, however one of them is more twisted than the other. In the film "The Pretty One' the twins are mixed up and the one who is alive is believed to be her sister. Instead of telling any one she lives her sisters life. Both films have themes of deceit and secrecy and use their new identities to create the perfect life they have always wanted.