When a film opens with the text “Based on a true story”, the question is always how closely the real events have been followed and what has been dramatized. American Animals also opens with a similar text, but that text is soon adapted to “This is a true story”. As a viewer you immediately wonder what kind of film this will be, what can you expect when a filmmaker claims to tell the story as it is?
But in the hands of director Bart Layton, who also made the impressive documentary The Imposter, this story has found the right person to tell it. In that documentary, which was about a missing boy and someone who claimed to be him, he mixed interviews with re-enacted segments. Here he does this as well, but it’s more in the style of a traditional movie like Bernie. The largest part is with actors, but sometimes the real people occasionally give extra information or even directly influence the images of the film.
The film is about a number of young people who have the brilliant plan to raid the library of their school. IT has rare books that are worth more than 12 million dollars and for which a librarian is the only protection. However, they have no experiences whatsoever and use google and movies as references to plan their robbery and sell the stolen goods.
Just like in Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, Layton shows that memory is not always reliable. The men involved do not tell the same story about some details and you, as a viewer, can also wonder how reliable the stories are of men who have performed such an act. The robbery itself is portrayed with an enormous amount of tension and the actors who do the reconstruction are fantastic and don’t make you hesitate for a moment about the mindset and feelings these people had at the time. American Animals is a masterful documentary / “heist film” hybrid that never is boring and asks questions at the same time. About memories and the feelings that you yourself have about these men, who seem very sympathetic but in the meantime have done things that every “normal” person would not do.
[score8]