User reviews

Personally I'm a 55 year old white male with a degenerative neurological disorder. In 1993 the randomly occurring damage took out the equivalent of my FAT for those of you who are computer geeks. Presumably all my memories were "there." Just no organized way to find any. Think, of yourself as a library, hit by a flood. The pages of information may still be there. But not even adjacent to each other, much less in the right section of the library.

I'd walked down the hall and had the familiar experience of "what did I come in here for?" But I then realized I couldn't think of _anything_ that I had a "desire" for. I remember thinking, "Do I like blueberry pie?" I couldn't even tell if food in general was something I considered important. All the factual data was there, name, numbers, etc. But nothing about me as an individual. It took five long years to rebuild a replacement personality.

As such, this film was a very intense experience for me. (It did remind me of how much it's possible to love another person.) I would probably preferred to wait and rent it on video. But there were some yahoos (Look up Swift's Gulliver's Travels to understand the term.) who insisted the film was a fake. So I felt obliged to go see it, not just trust the opinion of reviewers like Roger Ebert. My wife and I both strongly disliked the music. As a movie, it's definitely so-so quality. But it's asking a lot to expect that an exceptional event would happen to an exceptional film maker. If Oliver Sacks wasn't a good writer there would be no "Awakenings."

I definitely would recommend that people see the movie if they care about what being an "individual" means. If you have it on DVD, watch the clips of Mr. Bruce before the "event." Get a good sense of that person. Then contrast it with who's there in that body at different times after the event. Note the purity of the love felt by the mother and daughter that first looked after him, while he was still a "child." I've had the experience of doing that with my best friend. The 9-12 months that I helped him put his life back together is the closest I'll ever come to being a parent. I wouldn't trade that joy for anything.

For further reading I would strongly suggest the very entertaining "Phantoms in the Brain" by V. S. Ramachandran and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" by Oliver Sacks. For exploring the limits of what consciousness is "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field" by Kary Mullis. These are both entertaining and informative, if you're not afraid to find out how little you know.

The subject matter is intriguing; for no apparent reason, a man loses his memory. He doesn't know his name, or friends or family, and has to rebuild his life.

Unfortunately, his friend, the filmmaker, takes too much artistic license in trying to create mood. Between too many shaky camera sequences and gratuitous b-roll, it loses the audience quickly. It reminded me of WILD BLUE YONDER which spent too much time with atmosphere and not enough time with content.

It's worth a view to be a voyeur, and watch a man rebuild his life, and decide on what to embrace from his past, and how to continue into the future.

Rupert Murray makes his film directing debut here, in a documentary movie that tells the story of a friend of his, a young man, Doug Bruce, an intense and successful stock broker in New York City who one evening experienced a dissociative fugue state that lasted perhaps up to several days. Once he had come to his senses again, lying in a hospital bed, he realized that he had no memory whatsoever for his past: his identity, name, or personal history. He retained excellent language skills and other instrumental abilities, could learn new material and remember it, and even was able to write his first name accurately - his only link to his past - when registering for medical tests.

Dr. Daniel L. Schacter, a Harvard Memory Psychologist, appears early in the film as a useful talking head, offering us a concise review of the various classes of memory: episodic (personal identity and life events), semantic (general fund of information about the world), and procedural (language skills, how to ride a bike) memory. It is only episodic memory that is compromised in psychogenic amnesia. Bruce's retained language skills and other procedural abilities, and his intact fund of general knowledge, demonstrated that Bruce was suffering from a psychogenic amnesia, not an organic amnesia, i.e., one based on obvious brain damage.

In organic cases, e.g., in Korsakoff's or Alzheimer's diseases, or after severe head trauma, amnesia also is not limited to the past (retrograde amnesia) but also affects the capacity to form new memories and retain newly learned material (anterograde amnesia). An MRI study did show that Bruce had an enlargement, perhaps a tumor, in the area of the pituitary gland, but this could not explain his fugue or memory loss.

Bruce had a broad enough social network – stretching from New York City to London to Spain, where his family live - that it did not take long before he was identified and then looked after by people who know him. The film traces his initial medical evaluations, his reunion with friends and family, and his efforts to reconstruct his life. He does gradually fill in some missing pieces, though even 15 months later he has only patchy recall of his past.

We never do learn of any obvious trigger for his fugue state. Apparently he had never before suffered from such an event. Reference is made to the fact that his mother had died, but that was several years earlier. No other major stressors were disclosed. There was no evidence of trauma or foul play surrounding the onset of the fugue. No so-called "secondary gain" factors emerged, i.e., there was no apparent reward to be gained, or scrape to be avoided, by a convenient (malingered) amnesia episode.

Though in various newspaper accounts since the film's release, we learn that Bruce has indulged in a great deal of self promotion around the matter of his amnesia, never tiring of being the center of attention at Manhattan parties, even starting up a website about his situation. Maybe his initial amnesia was real enough, but these subsequent developments do suggest that sustaining his condition has had its rewards.

This was a very frustrating film for me. I kept waiting for psychiatric treatment to commence, since Doug's amnesia was indisputably psychogenic in origin, or at least for more information on a plausible set of stressors to explain the timing and extent of his problem. Initial evaluation by a psychiatrist is mentioned early on, but treatment apparently never came; it certainly wasn't mentioned. So Bruce's case was very much like a 19th Century case, where everyone agrees on the diagnosis and then just sits around waiting. Cost was certainly no object: Bruce and his family were well off people.

The only interesting aspect of the situation was that everybody agreed on Bruce's largely favorable personality changes after the fugue. He showed a fresh sort of innocence, thoughtfulness, emotional openness and sensitivity, where before the event his friends saw him as brash, cynical, and a more flip wit. But these personality changes weren't dwelt upon as much as I would have wanted. At film's end, we see Bruce building a new, more relaxed life, with a new lover and a new career in the arts.

This film held my attention keenly because of my clinical interest, as I waited in suspense for the other shoe to drop: i.e., for resolution of the problem, or at least elucidation of the causes, as a consequence of psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, or the use of amnesia-busting drugs, e.g., sodium amytal or pentobarbital interviews. Why weren't any of these things tried? Did Bruce duck treatment because he knew he didn't need any? Take away clinical pique, and actually found this film is pretty boring: neither the protagonist nor his friends or family are especially interesting people. Bruce's reunion with drinking buddies in London showed them to be especially dull. My Grade: B- 6/10

I agree that it isn't a very rigorous documentary and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. I have known Doug Bruce casually for about a year and a half. He takes his dogs to the same dog run I frequent. I only found out about the amnesia after the movie was released, and he didn't share anything about the amnesia to anyone else at the run. He would talk about photography, his dogs, just normal stuff. Usually he keeps to himself. He is always very sweet and polite, and does have a certain childlike enthusiasm that is very endearing. Now that the movie is out, he will talk about it a little but obviously feels uncomfortable revealing it to those he doesn't know. I also know a woman who is good friends with Doug's previous girlfriend of eight years who also appears in the film. The ex-girlfriend definitely believes him, as do most if not all of those who knew him well before the amnesia, including his family. The Washington Post just wrote a story which strongly doubted the veracity of Doug's story and his condition. There seems to be a growing, somewhat mean-spirited backlash against Doug. I guess the story just seems too good to be true. People seem to resent the fact that Doug has good looks, money and a lovely girlfriend. But does that mean he's faking amnesia? I like Doug and can't imagine he would go to such extraordinary lengths, especially ones that would distress his family and friends, by inventing such an incredulous story. It just doesn't make sense.

I saw this movie at a film festival in Nantucket and all I can say is: wow. Wow for the story of the documentary, wow for Doug's personal strength, wow for Rupert's unflinching look into his best friend's new life. The movie centers on a day in July in 2003, where Doug Bruce comes to on a subway in Coney Island with no recollection of where he was, what he was doing or who he was. He went to a local police office, who brought him to an ER and then was later checked into a mental facility. He finds a number in his backpack, which leads him to an old girlfriend who comes to claim him. This might seem like the end of the story, but it is really only the beginning, because Doug still has no memory of any day in the last 35 years of his life. I found myself not wanting the film to end, and when the credits started to role I felt slightly depressed in the fact that I wouldn't be able to know any more about Doug Bruce's life unless another documentary was made. See this movie, see it again, tell all your friends!

It's a mockumentary! No, really. Think about it. He wakes up on the subway without either a wallet or a mobile phone and the filmmakers don't comment on this. Him and his buddies shoot some Super-8 home movie footage INSIDE a bar (you'd need lights for this). Everyone's so damned gorgeous. He takes a video camera to an airport to meet his dad. He hugs complete the friends who have become strangers as if they're still his best pals. The acting's mostly good but there are hammy moments too. Watch it again... (you see, now they've got me doing their PR too). It is wonderfully shot though and does contain some genuinely thought-provoking material about the nature of identity and the importance of memories in cementing personality. So when will the filmmakers come clean?

Unknown White Male is one of those movies that makes you think, and makes you think HARD. It documents the very odd case of one Doug Bruce, whose ride on the subway in New York City takes an odd turn, when he suddenly develops a severe case of Amnesia and doesn't know a thing at all about his former life. He winds up at a hospital, where a chance piece of paper with a phone number of the Mother of a former date ends up to be the beginning of a literal self-discovery, as friends and family try to put Doug's life back to normal. The interesting part of this is, of course, is whether Doug is willing to accept all of this, or will he reject some of things that he's always loved? This documentary is pretty awesome in it's compounding of the most immediate of life's lessons, and raises some rather interesting questions, such as could you rebuild a person's life exactly as you left it, and most interestingly, and the one that I have a major interest in, is what if people wanted to change some aspects of you that were undesirable to those people? Damn. I know my parents would get first crack at me, and try to create something else. I KNOW this. As I said, this film is a great conversation-starter, it's very well made and interesting, and proved to be one of the best films in the Vancouver Film Festival this past year.

Director Rupert Murray has had to fend off accusations that his film is a fake and it's not hard to see why. Murray is a first-time filmmaker and not a documentarian or journalist of any kind. So a few minutes in when Murray intones loudly and unnecessarily with his best imitation of Nick Broomfield, its sheer inappropriateness seems like parody. UWM has to be the least rigorous pose a documentary filmmaker can possibly strike.

It purports to be the story of Doug Bruce, an Englishman in New York who claims one day to have suffered a complete loss of memory. If Murray had any interest in science, he might've happened upon the fact that the fugue state he describes as being incredibly rare is actually quite common. Several cases a year are documented in the UK alone and a fair amount of case history exists from at least the late 19th C. Instead, Bruce is presented as a pioneer, experiencing something of which medical and psychiatric science has little to no knowledge of—all the better to romanticise Bruce's condition, to which Murray applies a gloss more typical of Hollywood.

That Murray is a friend at least explains his access to his subject and offers some explanation for the lack of objectivity. Instead of a probing investigation, Murray pointlessly renders Bruce's experience through endless sequences of unrelated, rapidly cut imagery of buildings, street corners, cloud formations, fireworks, etc., finding much value in that Final Cut Pro license, no doubt.

A fugue state is a dissociative break from identity and, in reality, is brought on by stressful events. No one in Doug Bruce's life has any interest in what might have caused such a break. No one is probed for knowledge of what was going on in his life and Murray hasn't the skill or fortitude to investigate it for himself. One suspects there must be some clues that would further illuminate the situation. E-mails, bank statements, credit card statements, phone records, etc. would contribute something to the picture but none of this figures in Murray's film.

Instead, we get a highly subjective, sketchy portrait of Doug Bruce who seems to exert a high level of control over the people in his life. No one dares to puncture his assertion of total memory loss, instead they welcome his presentation as a Forrest Gump-like sage of simple wisdom—even when that wisdom is directed at his own father with the force of a silenced revolver. Bruce is surrounded by women in NY; his former girlfriend from Poland appears to take up residence in his East Village loft; an Australian woman falls in love with the new Bruce 2.0 claiming he is without fault; another young woman and her mother nearly adopt him as family. They all eroticise Bruce as a man-child. Predictably, his allure is completely irresistible. Murray never investigates this either.

Murray introduces home movie footage of the man previously known as Doug Bruce, who seems little more than a spoilt, almost callow young man of privilege, which is the one constant of both incarnations of Doug Bruce: wealth and privilege. Bruce lived in a loft the size of which even Monica on Friends could only dream about; for all his medical concerns, Bruce doesn't appear to have any financial worries. His bank account apparently allows him to move forward as his new self with complete ease. There is never any apparent change in his lifestyle.

Bruce expresses no surprise or is at all humbled by the rather lofty, elevated circumstances he finds himself in. There is no relief expressed to find that he is not one of the 45 million people or so in the United States without health insurance. One of the joys of memory loss apparently is rediscovering food—especially if you can afford to tool around NY eating in its finest restaurants. For his part, Bruce expresses little distress or curiosity of his former self and is rather pleased to have suddenly just sprung into existence as a grown man cut off from any sense or, more importantly, OBLIGATION of personal history.

The filmmakers, Bruce's friends and somewhat unwillingly, his family, pretty much encourage his voluntary loss of memory or hoax, which isn't meant to disparage any of the participants. But Bruce's claims of complete memory loss are less than convincing. When Bruce returns to London, he states that, in comparison to the women that surround him in NY, his former friends seem "more like lads," a buzzword of '90's London that belies his claim of total memory loss. He also overly obliges the image of himself as innocent yet wise man-child to a fault—when introduced to a newborn, Bruce marvels not only as if he'd never seen one before but as if he'd never before contemplated our origins as infants. It is a ridiculous scenario of over-the-top romanticism of which this film frequently indulges. (Not surprisingly, we're never offered a similar sequence of Bruce rediscovering homeless people in NY or disparate lifestyles.)

That Bruce is able to move forward apparently without the aid of any counselling, more than happy to fashion a self somewhere between Chauncy Gardener and Forrest Gump, even more at ease assuming the lifestyle trappings of a stranger, strains credibility, which isn't to say that he himself doesn't believe it. What's more difficult is Murray's fashionable post-Memento interest in his friend as romanticised contemporary hero. Murray knows there is a story here, he just doesn't have a clue what it is. The complete disposability of Doug Bruce's former self (and, by extension, possibly Murray's present self) is well outside Murray's own awareness.

The video account in Unknown White Male was brilliant.I have watched different movies about amnesia, which is always a good story line but this one was very different and very real.

It reduced me to tears as I had suffered almost the same thing in the late sixties. This was without doubt the closest account I'd come across. The memory holds many facets, numerical, verbal, pictorial, humour, love, jokes, innuendos, the subtleties within our language, age old phrases, the list goes on.It's as though you're from another planet.

This is something impossible to fake as your whole identity is lost, and you come, in time, to accept that no one really understands, not even doctors. It's not a general thing, that others can comprehend within their own life experiences.

It has taken me nearly thirty years to come to terms with what happened to me, as at the time, understanding of the psychological long term effects of amnesia was very limited. I found this young man's story an inspiration and could relate with him in so many ways. The need to tape it, to remember, to have some data when there's nothing else. I wrote diaries and even put little pictures of the weather in the corner to keep remembering.

What a compelling story, I could not imagine in my life that ever happening, but hey Doug is proof that it can. To wake up and be totally unable to know anything about yourself would be so weird. I know that sometimes when I am driving, for one second I seem to forget which side of the road I am meant to be on, so the longevity of Dougs dilemma (if it be that) would be way profound. He seems to have taken it in his stride, maybe we didn't get to see the "down" side very much, I would have liked to have seem some more emotion on his behalf. I wish him and Narelle all the best for his NEW life, just a real spinney movie, Rupert did an outstanding doco on his mate. Fantastic. I loved it..

I saw this film last night and was very disappointed with it. It is quite apparent that the filmmakers have no training in how to construct an interesting story. This film is about as interesting as watching someone's home movies. The interviews with Doug, his family and friends make no attempt to delve into the startling revelation that Doug has completely lost all sense of his past. They all might as well be talking about what Doug plans to do after graduating from art school rather than talk about how Doug will handle "re-starting" his existence at age 37. There seem to be some small clues in the film that may explain how poorly it was put together. Doug spends little time back in Europe with his former friends and family and they don't seem to make the journey to visit him either (except for the filmmaker). Doug himself mentions that his British mates seem to have deep feelings for him but they seem concealed by a typical British avoidance of such emotion.

That is exactly how this film feels (or doesn't feel). There is almost no emotional connection to the film or the subjects (even Doug). You don't really even walk away with a "There but for the grace of God go I" empathy towards Doug. The most riveting emotional notes are in the first 10 minutes as Doug recalls the first hours of his amnesia and his complete feeling of being lost and real terror about not even knowing who he might be able to call to come pick him up from the hospital. After that, it is if the film has been sterilized of all emotional "infection". Even as a factual depiction of this extreme form of amnesia it falls very short of being informative or interesting.

Without apologizing for the filmmakers, I can understand how they would not want to use this opportunity to manipulate or exploit Doug's situation or his condition by forcing some kind of confrontation with Doug's past. But the film goers don't get any real kind of bridge with Doug's past either (or his present for that matter). Without that, you can't really move yourself emotionally into either wanting Doug to regain his memory or rooting for him to carry on with a new existence that is different and separate from his past. It is almost as if even his old friends and family didn't really know him all that well so there wasn't much of Doug for them to lose.

This movie should have some kind of theme to it. Loss...renewal...exploration...frustration...something...anything! And the filmmaker would have been better served to get some professional help with the subject and maybe take more time with the project to see if a more interesting story develops.

There is a lot of debate about how real this story is. I'd first like point out that no movie or TV show is reality. Everything is shot and edited to convey the story that someone wants to tell you. Are Michael Moore's movies real? They are documentaries but they are telling a story that he wants you to hear. Is The Real World reality? It's a bunch of people trying to go about their lives with cameras in their faces that is then severely edited to tell a story that someone thinks will be entertaining.

With that said, Unknown White Male kept me engrossed for 90 minutes and made me think the entire time...which is more then 99% of the garbage that is out there today. The movie plays out like a study in philosophy. The "new" Doug seems like a great guy and his friends and family can't help but like him even though they wish he was the "old" Doug. The more you find out, the more you realize that he had a great life before he lost his memory and that is one of the interesting questions this movie brings up. Is it possible to lead two completely different existences that are equally as good and fulfilling? Is life better when you have no expectations and more importantly: nobody in the world has expectations of you? Within the world of the movie the thought will always be there whether Doug is faking this all to escape his old life. And the question will be there whether or the whole story was created for the sake of making the movie. Sure there are holes in the story, but I say it's still a great story.

One of the most interesting movies I've seen in ages. Not the usual over-dramatized Hollywood fare, this film moves like nature with a pace that is not contrived.

I am a psychologist and from that perspective I found it to be truly amazing. The story is of a young man who loses his episodic memory. These cases are rare, and what this means is that he loses the meaning of things as learned through experience. In fact, our perspectives on the world are self-constructed as we grow and experience the world. In this case the main character has lost that kind of memory and therefore people, places and things lack any kind of meaning - it's the most complete kind of loss I can imagine.

At first he is terrified, as one would be, but as he reconstructs his life, you find yourself a little envious of his appreciation of the most ordinary things, something that is available to us only when we can deconstruct the meaning we have created for something. There is an innocence and wonder that is not ignorant or naive, rather it is pure and without baggage.

It would be scary to have this experience, but a great opportunity as well.

Having my PhD in Neuropsychology, i is very apparent from the film that this is not a documentary but in fact a fictional story. The symptoms displayed by the character show many things that prove this is fake. It is also, suspiciously likely that the things he does are so "novel" almost as if he woke up and CHOSE to start a new life. Fake it til you Make it. This Is A Fake The Worst part is that his best friend just happens to be a filmmaker and He willingly chooses to pick up a camera immediately after he is "struck" with amnesia. Also, This man chooses to talk about his "condition" as though he is a celebrity... Good Job Fakers It is Pathetic really Nice job with this fake.

The allure of the documentary feature of filmmaker Rupert Murray's "Unknown White Male" 2005, sure beckons the question of "Can it ever happen to me?" or to a family member, or a dear friend I know? That is the unknown just like 'what will tomorrow be' or 'will one be struck by lightening'. The unexpectedness of it all is what makes this film interesting and intriguing to watch. The narrative makes us care about what happened, happens, will happen to this "unknown white male" - Doug Bruce, so we came to know of his name and his possible history, by and by, as the film progresses. The common fear of the unknown/uncertainty takes on a real edge to one's viewpoint of life. Certainly the likelihood of 'forever lost of one's identity' and being confined to a psychiatric facility is no savory thought.

Director Murray, a former friend of Doug's and now a friend afresh (just like everything in Doug's life), through this film experience, shares the reconstruction anew the chronological events of Doug's 'new' memory. Call it building or rebuilding (whichever you will) a new 'lease' of his life. Does Doug care about the past - his past? He's practically learning everything in everyday living, including the sense of walking on the sidewalks of New York City, like a child getting his awareness of the surroundings he's in. It was at once scary yet fascinating - will he be in danger of being taken advantage of? Will he lost his way again? What is his perception of things now? Of friends he once known before? So many questions. Yet when we see him meeting up with his siblings and his father once again, there's a certain calmness about him. He seemed more mature and at ease than the Doug once before. Or is he really?

"Unknown White Male" is a worthwhile film to experience. It is just as dramatic as any Hollywood movies. It's insightful and full of humanity qualities. Just like life, there are things that are unpredictable, and we don't (get to) know all the answers. Things happen for a reason - the acceptance of circumstances and simply live could very well be enough. What is enough? Different strokes for different folks, to each its own.

For another documentary that comes through as an engaging mystery with subject matter/person being pursued, check out filmmaker Mark Moskowitz's documentary feature "Stone Reader" 2002, available on DVD.

Strange tale of Doug, whose autobiographical/episodic memory is wiped one night due to still-unknown causes. He remembers nothing personal, just facts about the world and how to perform skills he has mastered. This is a wild dual-camcordering of his reintegration into a family, a profession, and finally a network of friends (including the director/principal cameraman) he was meeting for the first time. Doug shoots footage full of the wonder of things we take for granted, and the tenuousness of that which we consider integral: our sense of self, which seems to be constructed from the totality of our experiments. Doug is not what Doug was.

Doug Bruce woke up on a train surrounded by unfamiliar landscapes. He gets off the train and has no idea that he is in Coney Island, not far from his New York apartment. Without any clue as to who he is or where he lives, Doug turns himself into the police who struggle to work out who he is either. With time Doug's wide former social circle of friends means that he is identified and the pieces begin to fall into place. Well, at least for others, for Doug he still has no idea who he is or how his memory loss had occurred.

In theory Murray's film should have been fascinating and devastating because the subject matter offers the potential to be engaging (it could happen to you) and emotionally impacting. Sadly Murray single-handedly manages to flush this opportunity down the toilet with a documentary that is little more than a load of footage stung together without any real idea of direction and structure. Conceptually the film is interesting early on as the experts put forward their theories and we start at the beginning. However the film falls flat as it progresses as it appears to have little to add. Watching Doug awkwardly greeting crying friends as if they were strangers gets a it old quickly and it didn't offer much more than that after a while. This minimises the emotional impact of the piece and takes us out of Doug's head.

The bigger failure is the total lack of cynicism in the film. I am aware of the articles and others who have scoffed at Doug's claims and I must admit that with some of the claims that lack logic I found myself wondering if he was putting it all on. Indeed some of the inconsistencies in what he can and can't remember did seem a bit handy to me and it was hard for me to not question the situation. Sadly the film never even considers the possibility and this total acceptance of the story takes away from its value as a documentary because it never questions anything. I'm not suggesting Murray needed to keep kicking Doug until he cracked but at least a bit of questioning would have been of value. Doug himself is convincing and mostly I was able to put down the inconsistencies to just being the way things were. However Murray's narration is poor and I couldn't help but wonder how much better the film would have been in someone else's hands.

Overall then, an interesting subject but a poor documentary that misses open goals and generally just seems happy to stick with one thread and not offer much in the way of insight, commentary or thought. A real shame when you think of the potential inherent in the material – worth a look for the initial value it has but just don't expect the film to do that much with it.

Apart from being visually stunning and intercut with photographs and metaphorical imagery it was a real experience to watch. The film has an interesting sound scape that combines powerful music with experimental avant garde and image techniques that made the whole experience a real eye opener. This film was fascinating and very emotive. please ignore the previous review as it doesn't do this film justice. The content of which takes you through a labyrinth of emotions and really raises some powerful questions about what makes a person and their personality.

I truly recommend this film to anyone that enjoys good films and documentaries and has a heart. What was interesting to me was that the film really grows with the audience and it will make you laugh, cry, and feel perplexed. Probably important to see on a big screen with decent sound.