Wildcat

2022 – Trevor Frost, Melissa Lesh – USA
 

Harry Turner, a young English soldier with PTSD from the war in Afghanistan, finds new purpose in life by going to the Amazon to work with a small animal rescue program. He forms a romantic relationship with the director of the rescue, and bonds with two endangered ocelots, one who is killed by poachers and one who appears to be successfully returned to the wild and thriving at film’s end. The whole situation is very interesting, and I give top marks to the people involved, who were clearly concerned with raising awareness not only about wildlife conservation, but issues related to PTSD, depression, and self-harm. For the documentary itself, I’m not feeling so generous. The approach is manipulative, invasive and misleading – to both the subjects and the viewers. What is most troubling about productions like this – which are essentially single-episode “reality TV” – is that they insist on pretending that the presentation is nothing more than life unfolding as it would regardless of the cameras. But the subjects are controlling the cameras and are never free of the need to perform. Even if the situations and the emotions are real, they still have the freedom to ponder, prepare and even rehearse the things they say in front of the camera. This is dangerous because it’s a type of fiction that’s being advertised as non-fiction. All documentaries straddle this line to one extent or another. The filmmakers, non unlike journalists, thus have a greater responsibility to not abuse the tools of the medium – photography and editing – to mold the material in more dramatic or sensational forms. In Wildcat, Harry and his partner sob frequently and converse about very some serious things, and confide in the camera reality TV style.  I found myself unable to surrender to the “story” because I was thoroughly distracted by the absence of any attempt to reassure the viewer that what was being presented was not being filtered and shaped to manufacture drama. If the filmmakers aren’t willing to go that far for their own audience, why should I invest myself in the final product?