killed Nicholas? Obviously this will all be conjecture, but I am curious what impression others got after watching the film.
Personally, I would guess no. I think their acceptance of Bourdin as Nicholas was born out of the human mind's natural tendency to hold onto beliefs, especially pleasant ones, not out of some sinister cover-up motivation. And there really is nothing further to support the idea that anyone killed him.
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Yup. And that was the same person who they say was violent and a drug addict who possibly also turned his mother into a drug addict. The P.I. also said that Jason (Nicholas' brother) called the police a few months after Nicholas' disappearance and said that Nicholas tried to break into the house. According, to the P.I. that't the kind of things people do when they want to deflect guilt from themselves, or when they want to make it seem like the person isn't dead but ran away on their own accord. I've also heard cases where people will say they received a letter from the supposed runaway, who is actually dead. They also said that when they called Jason in a rehab facility to tell him the news of the frenchman impersonating Nicholas, he said he knew and seemed nonchalant about the whole thing. And then the following day or something he broke out of the rehab clinic and overdosed. Personally, I do think Jason had something to do with his dead, and I also think the mom tried to cover it up. I don't believe that the mom actually confessed to Frederick, but it was obvious that she was trying to cover something up. Like by not letting them take the DNA, any person who thought for sure that was there son, would do anything just to prove it and move on with their lives. I would say "F it. Do what you need to so I can take my son and help him through this, so he'll never have to relive it again." But she was clearly uncooperative. And I think the lie detector was a fluke, why would you ask someone to continually take a lie detector test, I think if you or I were subjected to multiple tests, there would be some inconsistencies in the result. So although I do think she has something to do or knows something in the disappearance of her son, I don't think the lie detector is an accurate indicator of that. Last point. People around the neighborhood said Nicholas' ran away a lot, and seemed troubled; the tattoos, staying out late, etc. My thing is I honestly don't think that a kid that was receiving adequate care and good supervision would be running away repeatedly and acting out. IDK this story really got to me.
Nah, usually the truth is the simplest explanation, not the convoluted one.
I'd guess likely he hitched a ride from a very bad sick person. Then perhaps with the promise of some drugs, rode over to that person's place and is long dead with the body buried in the desert or dumped in the Gulf.
As for the family believing the 23-year-old Imposter, well obviously none of them are exactly the brightest bulb on the tree.
I dunno, I'm pretty sure it was Jason.
When he turned up to say hi to his returned brother he basically just said "hello, good luck" and left. That made me suspicious straight away, then later he was told that the "brother" was an imposter he seemed indifferent which also implies he already knew, and obviously now that he's dead from overdose we can only speculate unless more evidence comes up.
"When he turned up to say hi to his returned brother he basically just said "hello, good luck"..."
Well, that's what Bourdin claims that Jason said. I don't think we can believe him. Bourdin also said that the mother confessed to him that she and Jason killed Nicholas and hid the body. That seems like complete BS.
It does seem likely that Jason killed Nicholas. The PI said that a couple of months after Nicholas disappeared, Jason called Police and said Nicholas tried breaking into the house (which the PI said happens when someone is covering up a murder).
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The dilemma with someone like Bourdin is that there will be truth mixed with the lies and fantasies. I would hazard a guess that he picked up on something about the family dynamics that made him think they knew more about Nicholas's disappearance than was publicly admitted/believed. I think that his claim the mother had been involved with killing her son was him hitting out in retaliation for realising they knew he was a fraud and played along with it. It seemed really important to him that he could become Nicholas and be loved and accepted as him. This was destroyed with his suspicion that they knew he wasn't Nicholas.
Why do you refuse to remember me?share
isnt it possible he wasnt surprised to find out it was an imposter because he just knew its wasnt nicholas. The mother and sister were desperate to believe but the uncle was a bit more rationale and just thought thats clearly not him he has dark skin and eyes?
shareNah, usually the truth is the simplest explanation, not the convoluted one.
i believe it is generally considered a 90% likelihood that when somebody is murdered it is by someone they know
when you think about, the imposter would have worked it out over time (as another poster suggested) picture yourself living with a family pretending to be somebody, you would know instinctively whether they really believed you or not, there had to have been many awkward moments where it was obvious he had no idea about his own life before the age of 13 and general inconsistencies about his own identity.. he then would have expected his cover to be blown, and when it wasn't, you would be very suspicious about what was really happening.
I dont think any of that 3 family member killed Nicholas.
They just seams honest to me.
BTW that last scene where Bourdin is dancing like crazy in the prison ,i really want to slap the *beep* out of him there.
Absolutely.
shareI believe the family was responsible for Nicholas' death. Maybe not all, but I suspect Nicholas might have overdosed after having found his mother's or brother's drugs. Then the family got rid of the body and covered it up. I believe this because
a)the mother refused (freaked out) a blood test to prove whether this imposter was really him.
b)after talking with the FBI, the sister still showed up at the airport as if new information hadn't been received. And considering the imposter could have been dangerous, no need to keep up the charade.
c)and the sister practically telling him his past so he can commit it to memory, telling him who is in what photo etc...
We've met before, haven't we?
"c)and the sister practically telling him his past so he can commit it to memory, telling him who is in what photo etc..."
Keep in mind that you have only his word for that. It wouldn't seem unreasonable to show him his family after he'd been imprisoned for years, and he could have asked questions to gather information. The idea that she went through the photos methodically is something that he put in your head.
While there may be a first time for everything, to me it seems more likely that he's lying than that the family conspired to cover up a long-forgotten murder by passing off a stranger they'd never met as a son he looked nothing like, putting him on TV and drawing huge attention to themselves. He's the one with the known history of pulling off mad schemes, not them.
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I do think that they DID have something to do with it.
I believe it was Jason, yes.
The thing that gets me is they make a big deal about how they were the only ones looking for nick no poilce involment and how much they did to try and find him
So when then the fbi tells them the guy is probably not nick wouldnt you wanna know as soon as possible if it's not him so you can get back out there and try to find your brother it all seemed so selfish none of them stopped and thought if this guys not nick then nicks still out there lets find him they just stuck there fingers in there ears and yelled shut up
If the family really did do it, they were idiots for playing along with any of this. They were already Scott free.
I think many are underestimating people's ability to ignore reality when they really want to believe something, though. People are fooled every day by confidence tricksters preying on that exact element of human gullibility. Those crazy emails you receive saying Nigerian princesses want to give you US$10 billion? They keep sending those because they work. Sometimes people are strung along for months, gradually cleaned out of everything they own. There are usually warning signs, or friends and relatives attempting to talk them out of it, but they ignore those doubts because they prefer to believe they're about to become rich rather than that they've been foolish and lost their money. Some even ultimately fly to the scammers' country and end up captured and held for ransom.
The wish to believe that your child is back with you as opposed to tortured and dead somewhere is at least as strong as the greed for money.
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The Imposter is an extremely interesting documentary with an engaging presentation. Keep in mind, however, that the filmmakers are intentionally casting suspicion on the family, and they decide which information viewers are provided with. They want to leave things rather ambiguous, but it's still a bit like hearing from the prosecution but not the defence. While it's not impossible that someone in the family could have been involved, the almost entirely circumstantial evidence against them is not nearly as strong as the film leads you to believe.
Take the mother's polygraph test, for example. She passes the test, then passes it again. They try a third time -- something that would never usually be done -- and then she reportedly fails "every question" ("EVERY question"!) by a huge margin. That sounds to me as if it defeats the entire purpose of a polygraph examination, which is intended to measure the difference in stress levels between true and untrue answers. In other words, the mother's overall stress had increased when forced to undergo (lengthy?) testing for a third time. Stating that as if it proves she was lying seems to indicate notable bias or incompetence, which casts some doubt on the impartiality of other testimony from the FBI agent. (Keep in mind that she herself believed the imposter when he said he had been kidnapped by a multinational military force who changed his hair and eye colour using mysterious chemicals. She may have reason to subconsciously shift some responsibility.)
A couple of things said about the brother do sound unusual (mostly the police report), but the information is only briefly mentioned with nobody given a chance to rebut or explain it. It's still a very weak argument based in large part on what one woman claims he sounded like over the phone.
Almost everything else stems solely from the testimony of the pathological liar known to enjoy creating these kinds of situations, or on the assumption that "nobody could be fooled" (coming largely from people who were themselves fooled). He's fooled everyone else -- don't let him now fool you too.
P.S. Does anyone know what the filmmakers intended with the final digging scene? Are they trying to show audiences that there was nothing there to find, or leave them with an impression that something might be discovered there? If they had found anything, they obviously would have said so.
Edit: "GuyWhoSezThatsNotGood" mentions in the other thread:
The empty hole at the end is intended to be a metaphor--viewers can put in it whatever they want. That's according to the director.
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You described my thoughts pretty closely. To me, the film suggests that it could just as well have been a) none of the family killed Nicholas or b) Jason killed him, with the added stretch that either the sister and/or mom knew about this. But as you say, the film-makers are in the convenient position to be able to perfectly frame and highlight this ambiguity.
share...which casts some doubt on the impartiality of other testimony from the FBI agent.
Damn straight. It's hard to look like the least honest person in a film about a con man who steals the identity of missing children, but she managed.
I think you're on the right track.
Frederic is a pure manipulator, a sociopath. The final third of The Imposter allows him to play his game on the audience. Reshuffling everything we were presented against the family. The film saves the final shots to truly expose him for what he is: dancing with megalomania and tormenting other families of missing children with false hope. Its as if the director is shaming the audience for giving any credence to Bourdin's claims.
As to why the family accepted Frederic as Nicholas, don't believe that he wasn't acting on them the same way he acted on everyone else he preyed upon. Bourdin has an innate understanding of psychology and which buttons to press to keep himself afloat.
Does the family really know what happened to Nicholas? Well odds are that whoever took the boy knew him and the police reports are suspicious. But barring hard evidence, any accusation would be baseless...
This post pretty sums up my feelings about the film. The filmmakers had an obvious agenda to cast doubt on the family, but I think it was mostly based on circumstancial evidence and conjecture.
I think what people fail to realize is how easy it would have been for Frederic to do this to a grieving family for dozens of reasons. It's easy to identify, say a dead body, and conclusively say that this isn't their son. But would you turn away someone that the authorities identified that claims to be your son? I mean, who would conceive that someone would pretend to be a missing person?
There's a lot a 3+ year disappearance would allow the family to explain away, including changes in his appearance. He could have been beat until his nose was unrecognizable. They may have actually bought all the stories about not being allowed to speak English and changing of the eye color. For people who don't know what trauma and science can or can't do, you would probably believe this person you think has been tortured and raped. Add to that the desire for closure, the fact that any family who lost a loved one would probably give anything to have them back and you have a recipe for disaster.
I don't think the way the sister handled the photos is proof that she was coaching him. This was his own twisted account. Family members do that all the time. They reminisce, especially when they haven't seen you in a while and I imagine that in a situation like this, even more so, when you just want to pick up where you left off and relive all those happy moments from the past. I'm sure the way Frederic was talking like "Mom has put on some weight" etc., helped convince the sister.
I also don't think the step-brother's actions are proof of anything, even the police report about Nicholas trying to break in. It's obvious that they had a strained relationship. Unfortunately, for some people, even going missing and resurfacing is not going to patch that relationship. That doesn't automatically make him a murderer. And remember, the person who claimed that Jason didn't buy it for a second was Frederic. We don't know whether he bought it or not, only that he didn't care very much. As far as the police report, it's possible he always thought that Nick had run away, and he could have thought it was him trying to break it. It could have been a drug-addled dream. It could have actually been Nick for all we know. I think for someone who has no heat on him for a crime to go out of their way to plant a report to show that Nick was alive would be asinine. Again, neither of these things are conclusive evidence of guilt. They just prove that the two of them had a really messed up relationship.
As far as the family reacting the way they did to the FBI's information.. again, it's pretty emotionally trying for people who lost their son and then miraculously got him back to feel like they're going to lose him again. People convince themselves of ridiculous things all the time simply because they want to believe it. When the FBI started calling all this information into question, they probably just felt threatened, like they were going to lose their son again.
I think the lie detector thing is also completely bogus "evidence." First of all, you can't give someone a lie detector test until you get the answer you want. She passed twice and they persisted. You know what a lie detector tests? Your stress response. You know what's stressful? Being given a test over and over until you fail it. I think it was sloppy of the investigators and I think it absolutely reflected bias on the part of that woman. She had already been duped by Frederic, so she was looking for some conspiracy to uncover.
And like you said, everyone who believes this is buying into the lies of a madman.
You took the words right out of my mouth.... Thank you :)
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