This film is a pure documentary and has a high artistic value. The film is based on the artistic forger Elymr and re-evaluates the artistry and authenticity. Orson Welles is the director and the protagonist. In the opening sequence, he assured the audience that what we saw for a whole hour would be true, mainly the story of Elmyr and the biographer Irving. All the stories are completely correct, but their stories are used as a monologue and an explanation for the purpose of paving the narrative after the Welles narratives.
The film is combined with clips and mismatched shots, creating a disorganized viewing experience. But this forces the viewer to pay close attention to the narrative and audio in the movie, and can’t miss any details. We can see each of them has different account of what happened in themselves and what they thinking about. Welles didn’t draw a conclusion, he transfers the right to the audience. The audience would be a natural way to recognize the whole things and analysing what is true, who is lying.
I think this film gives me a new cognition to documentary and human weakness. The documentary is not just to record the real things, also it could create a new one to make it complicated so that we could see clearly the bunch of lies and their thoughts in their deep down. Go through the whole film, I can’t say this follow coherent narrative because it combines a series of historical events, interviewing and Welles’s footage, all of it make it dramatic. Besides it, I have to say I love the charm of the documentary character. That is the real life that real people made it. When we watch the film, we have known each of character what they are. Elmyr don’t believe the inspector, their work doesn’t make sense. He believes if his work hangs in the gallery, it would be real because it does make same value compare to the original one. Think about his background, we would infer he doesn’t satisfied with the current life, he has ambitions and jealousy. Everyone stands in their own way to defend themselves. We do not just know the beginning and the end of the story, also we do clearly see everyone’ darkness in their heart.