Rating: ****With MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and all the assorted social networking facets that exist the days, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time, so deeply personalizing one’s self online was strange and one could never be sure if the person on the other end was being earnest. Sure, there are still plenty of people on the internet, predators mostly, that are pretending to be something they’re not, but often we take people at their word that they are who they say they are. Think about it: how many times has someone you’re not sure you know, friended you on Facebook or the like?
But filmmaker Barbara Schroeder quickly sets internet paranoia back by about 10 years in her first feature documentary Talhotblond. Utilizing journalistic precision and impeccable research, Schroeder recounts the unfortunate set of circumstances that led to the murder of Brian Barrett, a promising young man that got caught up in the worst case of fatal attraction since, well, Fatal Attraction.
The story begins in online chat rooms and a cyberspace tale of boy meets girl. On one end is marinesniper, an 18-year-old enlistee about to head off to the frontlines of Afghanistan and Iraq; on the other is talhotblond, a bright precocious and virginal teen queen with blond hair and long legs. A torrid cyber-romance takes place between the two as marinesniper and talhotblond participate in X-rated chats, or sexting as the kids call it. By all appearances talhotblond was every inch the 18-year-old vixen she said she was, and marinesniper the ripped and dedicate young man doing his patriotic duty.
There was just one problem though: marinesniper was a 46-year-old factory worker pretending to be a battle-hardened soldier looking for comfort in his small town girl back home. Of course, talhotblond wasn’t all she advertised to be either, but that’s a twist best left revealed in context of watching the story unfold in the movie. Indeed, Talhotblond may be the best story Law & Order: Special Victims Unit never told. A startling tale of deception, obsession and naiveté taken to perilous extremes that resulted in the death of a young man whose only crime was being a bit too trusting.
Using exclusive access to the players and insightful analysis from psychologist Rex Julian Beaber, Schroeder paints a complete anecdotal and psychological dissection of the tragedy. What drove Tomas Montgomery, a man with a steady job, family and, by all accounts, a happy, productive life, to become so thoroughly obsessed with a woman he never met that he would kill someone for her exclusive affections? As incomprehensible as that question is, the filmmakers do a pretty reasonable job not writing Montgomery off as a gross pervert, and tries hardily to understand him. His counterpart, the woman calling herself “talhotblond” remains a sphinx though. Not including her in the doc, either through her own refusal to participate or the filmmakers purposefully excluding her, makes the film’s title character its real villain.
In thinking about the film, that part is problematic. Such great pains were taken to cover the field and understand the players, as each text message shown seemed mined with subtext. But the woman at the centre of it all was conspicuous by her absence. Combined with the posthumous narration by an actor playing Brian Barrett, the film seemed uncomfortably partisan. What is admirable about the film are the facts of the case, and they way they’re presented, and what is surprising about it is that those facts are so lurid, so scandalous, that given our current media culture, this story is not more well known.
Schroeder’s compelling narrative style though makes Talhotblond one of those has to be seen to be believed documentaries. The implicit tragedy of the film is that the most honest person in the central triangle is the one that paid the most terrible price, and the feeling that Brian Barrett was left alone out in the vast internet forest without adequate protection. But what is adequate protection? Is it a crime to play act or pretend to be something you’re not? Is that not what things like World of Warcraft and similar online games, are all about? Talhotblond is a guaranteed discussion provoker with no easy answers.
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