Were this family so desperate to believe he was their missing son that they overlooked all the signs that he wasn't? Is this the psychology of desperate minds? A bit like the return of the Soldier or Martin Guerre.
Or was there something more sinister going on?
Spoiler ahead
Thats what I took from it, that the mum and the sister were so desperate to have him back it clouded their judgement. Like Bourdin said once he convinced her on the phone it was him, the hard work was done.
Personally I think the brother killed him, obviously that's only my own assumption.
Yeah, the film (and Bourdin) made it look that way. Hard to know what we were being manipulated into believing, and what really happened.
shareThe private eye seemed pretty convinced.
shareI think the brother did it too
The mum and sister were just delusional out of hope and they couldn't see the forest for the trees (and they weren't the sharpest tools in the box either)
"Kiss my shiny metal ass !!"
My one criticism is that I felt the movie was pushing me to believe that the brother did it. Technically it leaves it open, but by ending with the (frankly bizarre) scene of the detective digging in the garden, as well as the editing etc. towards the end, it starts to weigh the argument against the 'suspended disbelief' thing and towards the family being suspect. It leaves it open, because it is still open, but I couldn't help but feel like the movie was made by someone who believed the family was to some degree involved.
The OP asks an excellent question, and at no point did I think the film gave convincing evidence that it wasn't just suspended disbelief. When the mother refuses the blood test, I do think it's possible that it's because she was in denial and didn't want to hear the truth; that doesn't mean she's suspicious. Polygraphs are notoriously unreliable.
Also, here's a question - if the mum and sister weren't 'the sharpest tools in the box,' then what about the woman from the FBI? Why didn't she check up on any of his claims? Other than mentioning his stubble, why didn't the fact that he was a different person leap out at her? Did she really buy the 'changing his eye colour' stuff?
If I have to tell you again, we're gonna take it outside and I'm gonna show you what it's like!
Also about the polygraphs...the tests don't measure truth, they measure the subject's belief in what is or isn't reality.
shareAlso: doing the test three times, and then getting the answer you want, and accepting that one! Nancy Fisher, the FBI agent, struck me as someone who enjoyed sensationalizing the whole thing and was slightly hysterical. I found it somewhat unprofessional that a member a government department was stating that she bought into those allegations, regardless of whether they had any credibility.
I can understand them rejecting the truth initially and intrusive things like DNA tests. You are happy and convince yourself that he is your son, and then have some outsider making what to you are outlandish claims. Obviously, there was nothing that would indict them beyond reasonable doubt. But there did seem to be some genuine ambiguity over how conscious they were of him not being their son (particularly the sister), which seems a bit strange. And the situation with the brother at home, the police being called a number of occasions, the brother's police call that he'd tried to break in months after his disappearance.
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Also: doing the test three times, and then getting the answer you want, and accepting that one!
Not exactly...
"While Beverly was taking the polygraph, Fisher watched the proceedings on a video monitor in a nearby room. The most important question was whether Beverly currently knew the whereabouts of Nicholas. She said no, twice. The polygraph examiner told Fisher that Beverly had seemingly answered truthfully. When Fisher expressed disbelief, the examiner said that if Beverly was lying, she had to be on drugs. After a while, the examiner administered the test again, at which point the effects of any possible narcotics, including methadone, might have worn off. This time, when the examiner asked if Beverly knew Nicholas’s whereabouts, Fisher says, the machine went wild, indicating a lie. “She blew the instruments practically off the table,” Fisher says."
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www.twitter.com/bawwby
"While Beverly was taking the polygraph, Fisher watched the proceedings on a video monitor in a nearby room. The most important question was whether Beverly currently knew the whereabouts of Nicholas. She said no, twice. The polygraph examiner told Fisher that Beverly had seemingly answered truthfully. When Fisher expressed disbelief, the examiner said that if Beverly was lying, she had to be on drugs. After a while, the examiner administered the test again, at which point the effects of any possible narcotics, including methadone, might have worn off. This time, when the examiner asked if Beverly knew Nicholas’s whereabouts, Fisher says, the machine went wild, indicating a lie. “She blew the instruments practically off the table,” Fisher says."
She was not on drugs during the polygraph!
shareIf you research the story (there is a great New Yorker article) the mother was on heroine and methadone during the first two tests, and narcotics can help one "fool" a polygraph. The third test she was off the influence of drugs. And she failed.
sharefact....ALL 3 test were done one right after the other...same day all 3 took less than 4 hours. The article in the New Yorkers was biased as the writer had been sucked in and conned by one of the best con men around... Surprised?
sharei think the FBI statics on missing children are something like: in cases like this 90% of the time a family member did it. random abductions are rare, regardless of media.
so if you consider that, the sketchy druggy brother that ODs, the mind-blowingly dumb (or maybe criminal) behavior of the mom and sister..... it definitely points to the brother.
the family is now in denial that someone so "close" could do something so horrific.
then again, you never know.
Right from the start I suspected the family of wrongdoing, they were all violent,white trash drug addicts. I'd bet my nuts on a guillotine that family sh!t the're collective pants when they heard news that the "missing/dead" son was found.
Yeah excactly.
Also there was the contradiction of events/converstations between the agent and sister after the boy had been taken to the shrink and it was first suggested by a professional that this was not Nicholas.
The agent told the sister on the phone that according to the shrink there was no way this boy was Nicholas (because of facial features,accent, and recounting of events), and there is a possibility he could be dangerous.
The reaction of the sister was that she screamed and panicked and had to be calmed down and reasurred that he was not going to be taken back to there home, but instead she appeared at the airport to pick him up as if nothing had been discussed!
This is highly suspicious.
Yes, only someone who was desperately trying to cover up the truth would ignore the information the sister got on the phone from the FBI psychologist. Then to show up minutes after pretending the call never happened was just too bizarre. It's sad that there won't be justice for the poor kid who's life was clearly taken at such a young age by a beyond derelict family. I guess, no body no crime here, although I've seen people convicted without a body on here say & not much more, our legal system has many holes in it.
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My view of it was that it was the sister and older brother that were involved in killing the real Nicholas. They were just too stupid to really know how to properly cover it up.
The brother died, but from the sister's point there was some stuff that didn't make sense. Main things that made me believe this - the sister's desperation to make the fake kid remember and know something about the family, and the investigator's story about how she told the sister that it wasn't the real Nicolas on the phone and she screamed in horror and didn't know what to do but then goes to meet the guy anyways because she just had no plan about these things and probably had to react to unexpected news in the wrong ways.
The New York Times article provides a lot of info that are missing from the documentary (I think the director doesn't include them deliberately for the sake of dramatic irony, showing movies too can be as manipulative and deceiving as an imposter like Bourdin). The family is actually filled with problems. The home is not filled with that much warmth. The FBI agent actually suspected Bourdin before the trip to the forensic psychologist. In fact, it's one of the reasons why she took him there in the first place.
The family definitely has skeleton in the closet. My theory is that the death of Nicholas was an accident, caused by the mother and the older brother. While they're high, drunk, arguing, or all of the above. A push, a fall, then a knock on the head -- something like that.
The sister knows what's going on; she either was told about it, or found out the truth herself. Either way she is in denial. Probably more so than the rest of the family. I don't think her husband and son know though.
The older brother is probably the only one who refused to live in denial. That's why he didn't want to see Bourdin more than he had to.
Totally agree, the family definitely did it, but yes, may well have been an accident.... shocking documentary, just amazing.
Walter Sobchak: Am I wrong?
The Dude: You're not wrong Walter. You're just an a**hole.
"I think the director doesn't include them deliberately for the sake of dramatic irony, showing movies too can be as manipulative and deceiving ..."
You hit the nail on the head. I'm surprised that so many IMDB commenters have been completely duped, not only by dumb rednecks (from the "other side of the country of Spain), but by such an obviously manipulative movie/director.
What is left OUT of the movie is more interesting and telling than what is left in.
And that lone, obsessed, backwoods P.I. that just so happened to be the only one to have noticed the difference in eye color and shape of the ears....LOL!
"And that lone, obsessed, backwoods P.I. that just so happened to be the only one to have noticed the difference in eye color and shape of the ears....LOL!"
He wasn't the only one that noticed the different eye colors, the FBI agent said she immediately noticed that, and that his beard seemed too heavy for a teenager. He thought about the ears, but didn't notice it immediately, he had a read a story about another imposter, and that's how they caught him, so he wanted to compare them. The difference was tht the FBI agent had spent time with the family, and accepted their word that it was the right kid. The P.I. was an outsider, and he also worked for a tabloid news organization, so he was looking for a story.
I believe do- i think it's just showing their desperation
And i think Frederic was downplaying just how much he was trying to convince them also
Just another note: I really like your take on describing these possibilities- SO sick of reading comments on here saying the family was just stupid because they were hopeful
Do guys like "the thing"?
They like it better than no thing.
Why at is the likelihood of someone wanting to impersonate Nicholas? Had any of the family ever been acquainted with a person as disturbed as Bourdin and possessed sufficient insight from the experience to guess at possible motives for impersonation? The Spanish authorities confirmed it was Nicholas, as far as they knew and they were desperate for closure in any form and here they were being offered the best possible closure. I can understand them falling for the deceit. What we are not shown is whether or not they started having suspicions in the weeks after Nicholas returned to the USA. I would have thought all of them would find the imposter to be quite different to their experience of Nicholas.
Why do you refuse to remember me?share