It seems The Imposter‘s release is rather timely. Recently Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo was voted the best film of all time, knocking Citizen Kane off the 1st place pedestal which it has been standing upon for many years. BFI has now released an advertisement campaign for Hitchcock The Master of Suspense which has been shown before every film I’ve seen recently and whilst the creation of suspense is something cinema has adopted as its own for the past 100 years very often is it done correctly, or, executed to make the film actually suspenseful. However, Bart Layton’s docu-drama The Imposter manages to perfectly encapsulate that feeling of utter terror, mystery and rational crushing awe that only few can create.
The Imposter follows sociopathic French con artist Frederic Bourdin who craving a loving family impersonates the missing child Nicholas Barclay and manages to ween himself into their family dynamics. As the film unfolds audiences are forced to explore the unhinged mind of Bourdin himself but the family dynamics of the Barclays themselves.
Told through a series of interviews which Bourdin and the Barclay family Layton menacingly feed us snippets of information: enough to keep us interested in the story but more importantly enough to let us think ahead, allowing us to attempt to work out what’s going to happen next before pulling the floor from beneath us. Layton seems to know how the average mind works all too well, especially in regard to murder-mysteries allowing us to get miles ahead of ourselves only to watch our hard work crash in front of us, helpless to stop it. However, the balance out the documentary side of it Layton has crafted a feverish drama through the use of “CrimeWatch” esque re-creations of key moments. Layton here also has an eye for the dramatic, keeping things in a fever dream state and racking up the tension to an unrelenting degree meaning the audience can not rely on either side of the film to let them breathe.
But, what really sets The Imposter apart from the pact is the ways Layton essentially patronises the audience (in the most positive of ways). Layton forces the mind to work into overdrive in order to think outside and inside the box: there were moments where I was watching the reality side of it almost expecting them to discover something too gruesome for camera without rationally thinking that would but all too vicious for audiences (the last sequence is the perfect example of this, as the camera pans up from a hole in the ground almost forcing the audience to believe it’s a shallow grave). The whole film scolds the audience with anxiety leaving them with the inability to think with any sort of rationality. This, combined with tension provides some of the most tense viewing since Kill List.
The Imposter could be hailed as one of the documentaries of the year: it’s intelligent, scary and actually gives you something to talk about post viewing. It’s a story you’ll want to share and worth sharing in the first place and films go, Layton has one of the scariest movies in a long, long while.
15 certificate
Review by LiveWire Young Film Critic, Jay Crosbie (September ’12)