First Hit: Although not well structured, this film amazingly shows how one family, locked away from society, learned about the world through films.
This documentary highlights how the Angulo brothers; Bhagavan, Govinda, Jagadisa, Krsna, Mukunda, and Narayana journey from being home-schooled and raised almost entirely in a New York City Housing Authority apartment to where they go outside and begin interacting with the world.
There were years when they never left the apartment and at the most there were years where they went out as a group a half-dozen times. To while away their time, they created music and watched films. Then after watching the films, they would write down the dialogue and make reenactments in their apartment.
Their father locked them in the apartment and told them that he knew better than most people how they needed to stay away from society. He despises work. Their mother is loving, gets beat by their father, but perseveres through all the weirdness to give the kids a sense of strength.
The way the film is cut/edited together makes it more difficult to piece the whole story together. But I’m sure there wasn’t a lot of archive footage to use, but maybe some narration about how their story came together and where they are today would have helped.
Crystal Moselle (Director) did a good job of getting the boys to share, express and open up about how they were raised.
Overall: It was, at times fascinating, and other times had me wanting more information.