Two Sides to Every Ego-Movie Review

            If you want to step into a world of bad mistakes and tortured thoughts then Ryan and Alter Egos Documentary is for you. For fans that appreciate no plot and talking that rambles on for days, they would value these two documentaries. It captures the life of a man who experiences a lot of bad times in his life that made him the person he is today. One good quality of the story is that we get the point of view from multiple sources. You grasp how Ryan’s life is because you hear it from his friends, acquaintances, and even him. They let you get different and unique sides of the story and his life that you might not understand before. You can see the hesitation of Ryan wanting to be filmed about his life, but without it the documentary would be nothing.

For those who might have seen one documentary but not the other, they link together to describe Ryan’s life through animation and discuss the reason behind it all. The animation is a creepy, unique way to show how Ryan’s world came to be. Even though is provides us with a weird view on it, it is a great explanation to the purpose of the documentaries because most are boring and have people talking, but this was provides unique animation. It’s nothing like you’ve seen before because it’s so raw but true. The characters are well drawn out from the real life people they are suppose to be. They do a good job showing us what the documentary is all about. But the documentary of Alter Egos gets a little awkward. You can sense some of the speaker’s awkwardness and it overrules the documentary at times. We see the story being narrated by several different people that give the documentary character, but also discomfort.

These two documentaries are not afraid to get graphic and provocative. You see the true story of a man name Ryan and they don’t leave anything out of it. You come to terms with themes and motifs that you might be unfamiliar with. We see major themes like “homeless” and “drugs” that make this story line dark and obscure. If you’re not willing to dig deep into a lot of messed up material then these documentaries aren’t for you. They don’t shy away from the truth and they’re not afraid to show Ryan’s true self. Everyone has their own skeletons in their closets and in this documentary you’re first row in all the action. If it will scare you, I suggest you leave because there are no boundaries set and anything is up for grabs.

Work Cited

Alter Egos. Dir. Laurence Green. Copper Heart Entertainment, 2004. DVD.

Ryan. Dir. Chris Landreth. Copper Heart Entertainment. 2004. DVD.