Humans, especially males, most closely resemble their primate ancestors during adolescence. Yet for all that Hollywood courts teen boys, few films have gone so far as to treat this demographic as if it were nature documentary fodder. Two June releases – “The Tribe,” a Ukrainian feature film about a gang of deaf students, and “The Wolfpack,” a documentary about six New York City home-schooled brothers – call that bluff, and their approaches are not as ethical as we would hope.

Truth be told, in “The Wolfpack,” being homeschooled is the least of the problems facing the Angulos, who live as semi-prisoners in a claustrophobically small public-housing apartment with their cultish parents and special-needs sister. Eldest Bhagavan, twins Govinda and Narayana, Mukunda (the “alpha” of the pack), and younger siblings Krsna and Jagadisa have been raised by Peruvian father Oscar and Midwestern hippie mother Susanne, who traveled the world as Hare Krishnas before running out of cash and landing in a Lower East Side housing project. Oscar – an alcoholic autodidact whose physical violence is hinted at (we see old video clips of him though he infrequently appears in director Crystal Moselle’s footage) – declares himself philosophically opposed to work and the rest of the world unsafe so he keeps the family under lock and key. For most of the brothers’ lives, they’ve only been allowed outside a few times a year (giving credence to the old saw that New Yorkers never get to know their neighbors), and their sole connection to the world is through Oscar’s DVD collection. Left to their own devices, they spend their days watching and re-creating films – typing out and memorizing scripts, crafting costumes and props out of cardboard and duct tape, barking in a Tarantino patois, and staging favorite shootouts while Oscar nods out in a back room and Susanne and sister Visnu smile bleakly. Continue Reading →