Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway / Three Identical Strangers

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway / Three Identical Strangers

British filmmaker Tim Wardle directs an absolutely riveting documentary “Three Identical Strangers” that is a surprise at nearly every turn and that is no exaggeration. This is one documentary that actually had me tense with emotion throughout.

The story concerns Bobby Shafran on his way to Sullivan Community College in 1980. He is 19. When he arrives for his first day, most everyone greets him with warm affection like a long lost friend. A few minutes later, a group of students call him by the name Eddy. Bobby is flabbergasted. A friend of Eddy’s asks the freshman if he has a twin. The friend gets the idea to call Eddy on the phone. Bobby then gets the shock of a lifetime: when he says hello, his own voice answers.

Yikes.

The two agree to meet. When Eddy answers the door, he is greeted with his mirror image. Bobby is his identical twin, while later, when Bobby and Eddy are featured in the paper. David Keller feels he is seeing himself in the article photo. After a phone call, David is reunited with his two brothers, each separated at birth and taken by families of different socioeconomic backgrounds.David, Eddy and Bobby are revealed as identical triplets and they experience nationwide fame in the 1980s, appearing on nearly every New York talk show and newspaper.

The three of them become close. They are young, charming and enjoy partying. The media goes mad for the boys, including Madonna. They decide to go into the restaurant business together, focusing on a large venue themed on their identical brotherhood. They were now inseparable, ecstatically happy with pure joy.
What follows owes as much to something by Roman Polanski as it does to John G. Avildsen of “Saturday Night Fever”.

This documentary has the terrific quality of seeming to unfold in real time. It is warmly endearing, tense, propulsive and shocking with great horror and mystery all at once. Very moving are the interviews of the brothers Bobby and David. David has a bluntly blue collar manner, funny deliberate and nonchalant. Bobby by contrast is more measured and hesitant in speaking. Both are thoughtful, sensitive and self deprecating. From the very first moment you will see them as real life Tony Manero figures. Both of them are underdogs, but they are also heroes, brothers who well deserve an unencumbered life and have come up short through no fault of their own.

This is a sincerely throat-catching documentary. Although it echoes the film “Imposter” in tone, it is “Three Identical Strangers” that proves boundlessly warm, quirky and unfailingly infectious while its underside is bizarre, sad and unthinkable in comprehension.

The sight of a clinking champagne glass has never been more terrifying or for that matter, more offensive.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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