Mistaken for Strangers (2014)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Mistaken for Strangers is a film that I saw back in early 2014 at the IFC Center in New York. But it's also one of those films I almost forgot I saw- not because I meant to, it just got shuffled briefly out of my memory so far as the title - but I but was extremely glad just now I found the title as the subject matter. You may not know who the Berninger brothers are before going in (or you'll probably know one of them more likely than not), but by the end they leave their mark due to their personalities and how they relate to each other and the world around them.This is about a filmmaker brother (not a great one, but trying) who follows around his up-n-coming brother musician, who leads the band The National (you may/may not have heard them, big hit singles) while he's promoting a new album and playing concerts. Oh, and there are some incidents that make things awkward, weird and at times it's just a matter of this guy Tom Berninger messing up while kind of 'attached' with this band. Does he know what kind of movie he's making? Does he tell the band? What happens if this all falls apart and he goes back to making schlocky horror movies? Now there's stakes here - at one point the National is even involved at an event with the POTUS (that's an intense, kind of hysterical scene as I recall).So really, it's about this band The National, but only in the secondary sense. It's much more of a self-portrait, what it means if you keep mucking up your own work and getting in the way of doing what you know you can do creatively (this happens more than once, sometimes just due to the Party-of-One mentality Tom has). But in the light of this guy and his brother - a man who Tom looks up to, but also isn't sure he can really live up to in the sense of creative engagement. Can he make this a great movie? We're along for the ride either way, and it's a funny, affecting, and honest on all sides kind of experience. Charming, even.

Highly recommend this documentary. It is real and fresh and raw all at the same time. Taps into the human element with emotion and heart. One of the most real movies you may ever see. Don't take it too serious, you will be pleasantly surprised and delighted. Sibling rivalry and seeing how we don't measure up in our families from our parent's and siblings perspective is all confronted in this movie. You will laugh and cry for the characters, they explore how to live life and what is important in life. Very well worth your time. It makes you see the glamorous and drudgery of being in a successful band and what it takes to make it all happen. Ostensibly while looking at the band and its creative process we are given a beautiful look into the organic process of the brother and how he sabotages himself along the way and comes out the other end with a great movie as the result.

Music docs have a checkered history. Dig! might be the best of the recent bunch, but nobody came out of that looking good, lest of all the people it was intended promote. Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind were at once far too farcical and far too realistic, and really the whole "rockumentary" genre wasn't left with much wiggle room.This isn't a rockumentary. It certainly doesn't provide much of an insight into the National, although there are the odd interview with the lesser members who look, more often than not, drunk or confused or bored. No, this is about the Berninger boys. It's a study of how an overweight college dropout copes in the presence of his universally adored, alpha-male brother. It's very hard not to come out on Tom's side. Matt is aloof, pretentious and very egotistical (although at times he shows immense sensitivity to his brother's latent depression). Tom wants what Matt has. And this film is his personal journey into that. There's a deeply psychoanalytical element to this, which, intended or no, places it above say, Standing in the Shadows of Motown or Dig, which are straight up music profiles.Two scenes stand out for me. One, a drunken conversation between Tom and Matt's wife, both of whom are drunk. She knows that in most battles the alpha male wins. Look who she picked. The second, when Tom screws up and leaves Werner Herzog locked outside an LA gig.This film is terribly made; the director himself admits this. But in the end, for some reason, he's produced a profoundly moving portrayal of two brothers, and a world in which alpha males win. Fans of the National will be relieved to know that their favourites come across as nothing worse than somewhat humourless - a far cry from The Brian Jonestown Massacre. But fans of the National will appreciate the depressive undertones which are beautifully and subtly brought to the foreground.

Full disclosure: I am a longtime National fan, and I personally think that Matt Berninger is a genius. I watched this movie expecting a traditional band documentary, but even though I would have liked to see more live songs and other musical stuff, I found "Mistaken for Strangers" to be very entertaining and well crafted. Tom is Matt's younger brother, and the movie is mostly centered around his own experience joining the band on tour. He is immature, emotionally unstable, jealous of his brother's success, and kind of annoying, but somehow likable. One of the things that I liked most about the movie is the portrait of the different members of the Berninger family. They all seem like very nice people, and the love and respect that they have for each other (especially Matt and Tom) is evident throughout the film. Seems like both brothers have found a way to channel their own frustration through their art, and the results are very enjoyable in both cases. The movie shows that Tom really has filming talent, and I hope to see more of him in the future (but not exactly the B-class horror / barbarian flicks that he seems to enjoy making). My only complain is that I would have liked to see more of the Dessner and Devendorf brothers, and of course, more National music!