The Wolf­pack

Fam­i­lies. Every­one thinks theirs is a lit­tle weird. But we sin­cere­ly doubt there are many that could rival the osten­si­ble odd­ness of the Angu­lo tribe. That last word is par­tic­u­lar­ly accu­rate in this instance, see­ing as how the sub­ject of Crys­tal Moselle’s fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary is a group of six broth­ers (and one sis­ter) who have been raised in iso­la­tion from the out­side world – in a cosy apart­ment sit­u­at­ed in New York City.

From that descrip­tion you might expect The Wolf­pack to resem­ble an anthro­po­log­i­cal exer­cise, a clin­i­cal study designed to stim­u­late the great nature ver­sus nur­ture debate. Yet per­haps the most unusu­al thing about the Angu­lo broth­ers is how nor­mal they appear. Far from being a dys­func­tion­al, trou­bling­ly mal­ad­just­ed bunch, Bha­ga­van, Govin­da, Jagadisa, Krsna, Mukun­da and Narayana are bright, affa­ble and, most sur­pris­ing­ly, com­fort­able in front of the camera.

It’s at this junc­ture Moselle opts to reveal her film’s true hook. That this home­schooled hexad have been raised on a strict diet of movies, their child­hood spent metic­u­lous­ly reen­act­ing var­i­ous pop cul­ture touch­stones (Reser­voir Dogs and Pulp Fic­tion are notable favourites) using an impres­sive array of hand­made props and cos­tumes. What sets the Angu­los apart is the fact that their world­view is strict­ly two-dimen­sion­al in so far as every­thing they know about being human has been gleaned from watch­ing the kinds of films that offer a stylised ver­sion of reality.

Amid all the sib­ling-based swed­ing antics, the film strikes a more som­bre note. Hav­ing only been allowed to ven­ture beyond the con­fines of their Low­er East Side sanc­tu­ary on a hand­ful of super­vised occa­sions, these kids have lived depress­ing­ly sequestered lives. So what about mum and dad? Sure­ly their extreme cot­ton-wool approach to par­ent­ing demands intense scruti­ny? Unde­ni­ably so, but Moselle shrewd­ly leaves it to the view­er to unpick the film’s myr­i­ad eth­i­cal quandaries.