Although the documentary has been accused of being a mockumentary, or at least a staged story, the directors continue to deny it. To me, the important fact is that, disregarding whether this is a real doco, a re-enactment or a mocko, the film poses the viewer poignant questions on our modern culture, the Internet, our online persona, social networks and human communication. Catfish poses many interesting questions about self-perception and identity through the Internet: Is the image we present to our Internet buddies our real self? In which way? In which degree? Is our edited life profile a real representation of who really are deep down inside? Is it necessary to present our real self to the world through the Internet to communicate with others? Does the way we present in real life and the virtual life differ and in which degree? It also shows the need of modern society to hide to connect, and to connect using a enhanced beautified portrait of ourselves. It also portrays the ugly face of many online dating experiences, those that dating sites forget to mention, or the people involve forget forever.
This is is one of the best documentaries I have seen in the last 12 months. It is very entertaining, very real, in the sense that is a sort of visual video-diary, and the experiences and feelings that Nev shows are naive and raw, as flawed as ours could be, very human and believable. Moreover, the editing is fantastic as well as the tempo of the story. It is thanks to those, not just the story, that the viewer gets hooked on a film that is visually not very pretty looking or interesting a priori.
A very engaging, warm, fresh and intriguing documentary.
