When you listen to a story, what often matters most are the eyes you view it from.
In one such story, a Documentary called The Imposter, one Frédéric Bourdin learns about an American family searching for their missing boy named Nicholas Barclay. Bourdin, being a known fraud and trickster, decides to approach the family as their long-lost son. Though Bourdin has the wrong color eyes and a French accent, the family decides to accept Bourdin as their missing child. As a first time viewer, you are encouraged to question the family’s intentions. How could anyone accept this obviously French man who was seven years older than Nicholas? Are they so naive? Or, perhaps, the family had murdered their son and viewed Bourdin as a convenient cover-up of their actions. Through Bourdin’s perspective, the viewers piece together the crime scene and detest this family under suspicion.
At the very end of the film, right before the credits roll, the filmmakers reveal to the viewer that Bourdin is a pathological liar and known fraudster. He’s a textbook unreliable narrator.
We only heard one version of events.
Although The Imposter does eventually reveal the unreliability of Bourdin, it’s a blink and you miss it moment. Plenty of viewers will disregard or misunderstand the few seconds of revelation at the very end. What if, instead, we had framed the documentary from the viewpoint of the family?
Would the viewer have looked at the family with suspicion or compassion?
17 Pages
Recently, I watched a fascinating documentary on Nebula called 17 Pages. It follows the events of the Baltimore scandal; famously dubbed the Watergate of Science by the New York Times. Following a Doctor under suspicion, the film covers the 10 years of accusations, numerous panels and even a congressional investigation. All of this over a paper that used little more than $200k in taxpayer funds1.
The Rising Action
Initially, in this 90 minute documentary, you will be presented with a perspective on events. You’ll learn about Dr. Baltimore, a world-renowned Biologist and Nobel Laureate. In 1986, he co-authored a paper with Dr. Thereza Imanishi-Kari on Immunology2. Together, they will spend the next decade defending themselves from constant attacks over this single paper.
Serology
Thereza primarily focused on serology: a process used to identify antibodies. Our immune system relies on antibodies in order to find pathogens and foreign material that may threaten the body. Thus, Baltimore was very interested in studying this part of the immune system. However, he was not an expert in serology. Thus, he invited Thereza to partner with him on a new paper. Known as the cell paper1, they experimented on transgenic mice to understand how antibodies injected into sequences of a mouse’s DNA were expressed.
Idiotypic Mimicry
The paper, once published, made several controversial claims derived from observations made independently by both Baltimore and Thereza. What matters for our purposes is that Thereza argued that they had found evidence of Idiotypic Mimicry. To better understand this idea, imagine a few dozen school children showing up on the first day of school. One of the group, having gone away for the summer, decides to wear a new style. Maybe he wears his hat tilted to the side. Impressed, the rest of the school mimics this behavior. Similarly, if Idiotypic Mimicry is true, our immune system might mimic what works from other cells in our body.
Career Slump
Thereza, after hitting a slump in her career at MIT, is desperate for something to set her apart. Suddenly, she was given the opportunity to work with a famous Nobel Laureate, Dr. Baltimore. Further, she discovers a novel behavior of the immune system. Moving to Tufts, she builds her new research lab entirely around Idiotypic Mimicry.
The Controversy
After accepting a position at Tufts, Thereza hires Margot O’Toole to replicate the cell paper. O’Toole, a postdoc in need of work, gladly accepts the job. After months of trying, O’Toole fails to reproduce the observations that Thereza found. For her part, Thereza becomes increasingly dissatisfied with O’Toole’s job performance.
Worried that something might be wrong, O’Toole raises her concerns to a senior researcher above Thereza. In a series of different panels and investigations, O’Toole increasingly implies and then outright accuses Thereza of faking the results. O’Toole alleges a cover-up by the scientific community, and eventually she testifies before Congress and the press that Thereza had committed fraud and derailed O’Toole’s career.
At the core of O’Toole’s argument is seventeen pages from Thereza’s notes. O’Toole claims that these pages show that Thereza had lied in the cell paper. Thereza countered with new data, not included in the original paper, which properly explains away all of O’Toole’s concerns.
Worried that the complex science might complicate the narrative, one of O’Toole’s allies decides to call in a favor from the secret service. Utilizing forensic analysis, the secret service finds that some of the notes for this new data have been forged after the fact.
This finding, among others, is leaked to the press.
The documentary
Documentarian Kevan MacKay, the creator of 17 Pages, introduces a fascinating twist. Instead of the advertised 90 minutes as can be seen on the public page, he actually produced separate documentaries for each perspective: one from Thereza’s, one from O’Toole’s. Rather than make this explicit at the start, he utilizes the advantages of a digital first platform and randomizes the order the viewer is presented the perspectives. You are given one, biased perspective and then thrust into an unexpected second, conflicting one.
As an example, one quote stuck with me as an example of how perspective can alter the meaning of words. While O’Toole still worked with Thereza, they discussed why O’Toole was unable to replicate Thereza’s work with a chemical known as BET-1. No matter how hard O’Toole tried, BET-1 seemed to fail to perform as expected. O’Toole questioned Thereza about why BET-1 didn’t work.
Thereza responded: “It works the same for us as it does for you.”1
From O’Toole’s perspective, this is a confirmation that the chemical never worked; a tantamount admission of fraud.
However when we see Thereza’s viewpoint in the parallel documentary, she remembers the quote very differently. Rather than admitting that BET-1 doesn’t work, she is simply explaining that using BET-1 requires careful handling which O’Toole failed to do.
Adding to the confusion, Thereza is not a native English speaker. In her view, her heavy accent and weak English often caused confusion and prevented her from properly defending herself. In contrast, O’Toole seemed to downplay Thereza’s English and dismissed it as a poor excuse1.
Whether or not you view O’Toole or Thereza with suspicion or compassion changes based on which order you view the documentary. In fact, your views will likely change multiple times throughout the experience.
My Perspective
I re-watched all three hours of the documentaries twice. The first was done blind, thus I was unaware that I was only watching the first of two parts. Because the ordering of perspectives was randomized, I started with Thereza’s. I learned about this single mother, who struggled to thrive in a competitive male-dominated field, being harassed and harangued first by activist researchers, then the uninformed press and finally by a grand-standing Senator. Demonized by her low standing and poor English, she struggled alone, without support, until she was finally vindicated and cleared of all charges nearly ten years after her paper was originally published. I was made to view Thereza with compassion, while O’Toole appeared vindictive and paranoid.
However, when I approached the end of part one and the second part was revealed, I felt compelled to continue. The story beats repeated as before. However, the way the narrator focus and frames them changes. O’Toole was a young mother as well, bullied by Thereza for not putting in more hours in the lab. Though she worked her hardest, Thereza would disrespect and chastise her for failing to replicate her work. In fact, we learned that Thereza once openly cherry-picked data in front of O’Toole to create the desired results from an experiment1.
This, and many other contrasting views and recollections, added an extra twist to the story. Like viewing a sculpture from a new angle, I found depth and detail in a more complete story.
Conclusion
My first thought, after finishing watching the complete three hours of both parts, was how similar the concept was to The Imposter. Imagine if, after hearing Bourdin’s version, The Imposter restarted. But, this time the focus shifted entirely. We hear from the Barclay family, their grief, their doubt, their defense. Only with both stories can the audience attempt to uncover the whole truth.
Though the viewers of both The Imposter and 17 Pages will come to different conclusions based on the perspective(s) they ingest, I felt 17 Pages did a better job at presenting both versions of events. Further, because the ordering of parts is completely random, each side will have first dibs to half the audience. However, as a traditional documentary, The Imposter is unable to replicate this experience. Whether by time constraint, or the static nature of a traditional film, it can’t recreate such an experience as Nebula’s 17 Pages.