Dir. Neil Burger, 2002, USA, 88 mins
Cast:
Dylan Haggerty, Raymond J Barry This plucky movie will inevitably be compared to The Blair Witch Project, which is a shame because in many ways Interview With the Assassin is a much better film - darker, funnier, and yes, scarier. Both are so-called 'mockumentaries', in that they present imagined events in a documentary style, so that it appears that we are watching fact not fiction. The terror in both films derive from the unknown, from the characters and audience being literally and metaphorically unable to see, unable to separate legend from reality. In Interview With the Assassin the conspiracy legend is one of the most controversial mysteries of modern times (one of the most filmed too) and the hidden horrors are, we are led to believe, palpably real. Ron Kobeleski (Haggerty), a failed local TV news cameraman, discovers that the old man across the road, the terminally-ill Walter Ohlinger (Barry), is harbouring a terrible secret: Walter claims to have fired the fatal shot that killed JFK. He says he was the second gunman, the one crouching behind the stockade fence on the infamous grassy knoll. Walter wants to tell his story before he dies thereby guaranteeing him a place in history; Ron wants to be the one to break the news to the world thereby attaining journalistic superstardom. This is Ron's documentary of Walter's attempt to prove he is who he says he is. They go to Dallas where Walter reconstructs his version of the events of November 22, 1963. They visit Walter's ex-wife, who strangely can't remember where he (or she) was at that time and says that "Walter was a liar and still is". The shell that Walter claims belongs to the bullet that killed the President is taken to a forensic scientist who calculates it could have been fired any time after 1962. They track down Walter's former Marine C.O. who, it is alleged, hired Walter for the job. None of this investigation yields any proof but neither does it offer any evidence that Walter is lying. Raymond J Barry's commanding performance veers eerily between complete madman to calculating assassin. The menace steadily increases. Walter is the recipient of threatening phone calls. Ron notices strange shadowy figures picked up by his home security camera. It appears that they are being followed by undercover police. It looks like, especially as milked by Walter, that they are being hunted down by Government agents. We are taken in by all this partly because it is presented in a factual way - shaky hand-held photography, amateurish zooms, CCTV footage, hidden cameras, etc - and partly because Ron, who is a lousy journalist, is too. Like Ron, we, the cinema audience, are taken for a ride. We are duped into believing that this is yet another documentary on the Kennedy assassination. However, Neil Burger's film slyly takes us into unexpected genre territory: at times thriller, at times horror, at times comedy. Indeed much of it is darkly absurd. The reconstruction in Dallas , descends into farce when a passing tourist asks Walter to take a snapshot of him in front of the Book Depository. It's a funny, chilling moment which neatly sends up the necessary humourlessness of this kind of reconstruction documentary. The 'shooting' pun may be an old joke but it's one that resonates through this movie. The ingeniously ridiculous series of completely unexpected events that constitute the final act have the effect of making a mockery of the whole 'mockumentary' vogue. Without giving away the ending, the journalist finds himself central to a whole different conspiracy. Ron becomes more than just a reporter, he becomes an accomplice, a perpetrator even. In fact he ends up the subject of another filmmaker's documentary. Or should that be 'mockumentary'? Ultimately, Interview With the Assassin is an exercise in reflexivity, delighting above all in ridiculing itself. Simon Gray |
