After I finish watching The Wolfpack, I realized that it is a documentary, which is based on the interview. It is a kind of creation based on real life. Documentary making involves recoding the real life of the characters. It is about the real situation, but in which truth and privacy are contradictory. The documentary may touch the moral bottom line as well.
The recent literature has identified three main ethical problems in a documentary. Firstly, the firths of participants should be protected by signing a participant consent in the process of producing the documentary. It is ethical behavior for the filmmakers to disclose his or her intentions to the participants so that they will decide to participate in the documentary making. It is based on an informed understanding. Secondly, the filmmakers should have his social responsibility. Audiences have the right to know about integrity, fairness and good taste in a documentary. It should satisfy the public expectation that whether it presentation is true and moral. Thirdly, the filmmaker should be of objectivity. However, filmmakers agree that documentary filmmaking lack objectify.
The Wolfpack, telling a story of the Angulo brothers who are imprisoned in a housing project apartment for 15 years, without any contact with the outside world, under
They kill time by watching movies and they receive home education from their mother.
As mentioned above, filmmakers have their obligations toward participants. They have the primary obligation to minimize the harms to participants. their father remains deluded and secluded, considering the documentary is a kind of twisted justification for the virtual imprisonment of them. And the disabled family member is wisely left largely out of the frame. Moreover, when filming started some of them are not adults, they can not make their own choice. To some extent, the participants may have suffered health issue, they have deluded and secluded for many years, they are very interested in filmmaking, but they know little about the ethical issue and the consequence to their family. I agree with Thomas, this provokes kind of ethical questions—worrying about the issue of consent.
In addition, the filmmakers have their obligations toward the audience. They have obligations to inform the audience the truth about the world, presenting reality and holding tightly to the truth-telling. The Wolfpack does not tell the truth. The story is told in chronological order. After their break out, the story of their childhood is still unraveling, as the mother said. However, there is no rebellion against their father. Perhaps, the filmmaker has opted out of the difficult questions. What is more, what wee is dark and shadowy apartment. There is another evidence that children’s faces are painted with kiss style in a birthday party but with a tense and ominous soundtrack. All these are different with the truth of the story, a kind of failed cult as the Moselle thought.
Fomina argues that filmmakers place a greater value on the trust of their characters. It is the most important thing. I think the great success of is filmmaker Crystal Moselle has developed the relationship of trust with the Angulo kids. She allows them to drive the story, to talk about what they wanted to talk about.