A great documentary can lure you in with its strange premise, then bring you in with it's atmosphere, heart, and revelations. My Old School is a film that unfolds a collection of recollections from former classmates to depict a full, entertaining, and at times perturbing portrait of a Scottish scandal.
A new student in 1993 joined a group of 16-year-olds in sex education classes, wild nights out, and even the school play. There was something different about Brandon Lee from the very beginning. He made fast friends, rose through the ranks of popularity, and then when his secret came out, the town was thrown into tumult.
The director of My Old School was one of Lee's classmates, so you wouldn't know what happened if you didn't watch it. In front of a backdrop of a classroom with dusty chalkboards and sturdy wooden desks, McLeod and his friends step through the story as they know it. Maybe because the director is one of them, there's a disarming lack of embarrassment. They were not the only people fooled by Lee. "So were you, you mug?" she asked.
Credit: Magnolia Pictures
Many of Lee's classmates were willing to appear on camera, but Lee required a caveat. He agreed to an audio interview but did not want his face shown on camera. Instead of shooting him in silhouette, as if Lee was a state witness on the run from dangerous criminals, McLeod hired an actor to lip-sync these audio interviews, giving his words a face and a visual performance that proves clever.
None of the actors would do that. Alan Cumming was once considered to play Lee in a film about his life that never came to fruition. This is a nod to the story's complicated nature, but the casting is a bit odd. The rest of the interview subjects are not guarded. The audience is urged to question everything Lee says from the beginning. He's hiding even now. Behind the face of a beloved, award-winning thespian of the stage and screen who brings a mischievous wink and subtle sophistication to every outrageous anecdote, Lee has the mind control powers of a Jedi.
Credit: Magnolia Pictures
While playing the contemporary Lee, Cumming wears gray hair, glasses, and the conservative garbs of a respectable everyman, but his performance extends to the documentary's many re-enactments of Lee's time among his 16-year-old classmates My Old School uses voice acting from performers instead of cosplaying as kids in a live-action comedy style. It does so in a way that is very similar to MTV's hit cartoon, "Daria".
Like the Cumming casting, the students and their teachers are depicted as caricatures. Gen X'ers and elder millenials are reminded of high school hijinks when they see the Daria style. It works perfectly thematically to portray teen bully, reckless partying, and cool kid makeovers, but it's also a nifty solution to keep Lee's face off camera, helping obscure the secret at this story's center. After the cat is out of the bag, archival footage from the school and Lee's subsequent apology tour will reveal his '90s face, creating a terrific payoff for the doc's shocking finale. Yes, you can find this, but My Old School is more enjoyable when you're on the ride.
Audiences are invited into the excitement of the reunion and also the thrill of a hot gossip session with the interviews conducted by McLeod. Now grown-ups, they joke, laugh, and gleefully detail how their school's principal was like a self-styled Batman, complete with an intense sense of justice. The animation happily plays into it. As the story progresses, an uneasiness creeps in. The subjects are encouraged to think about what this revelation meant to them when they were younger.
It would mean a lot to know that your friendship was built on fiction. What would it be like to see old footage with a better idea of what was going on? How would your opinion of Lee's family change if you realized what was happening?
He doesn't rush past the pain of the scene. As he did with the joy of the initial gossip sessions, he welcomes us in to share the pain of the classmates. You can smell the chalk dust in the air and feel the hard wood chair beneath you.
Interviews with Lee became more pointed as they dug into his deceptions. He is an internationally recognized liar and his responses are not always nice. Is he telling the truth to us or to himself?
Don't get discouraged. We will not be left in this dark place. He transitions from blithe youth to somber adult realizations to move on. Something strange is what Lee thinks of that. There are pictures of them for the rest of his class. Black-and-white school pictures are placed against moving modern footage to showcase their work, their children, and their hobbies. The school photos roll into the credits and remind us of our naive youth and how it shaped who we would become.
My Old School has a balance of nostalgia and giddiness with a dose of reflection and uncomfortable realizations. The story feels like the stuff of a Hollywood teen comedy, but it isn't. When I finished My Old School, I wanted to watch it again to see how it had changed since I first saw it. This doc is more fascinating on a second watch than it is on the first one. You can see the edges of the puzzle pieces, but you don't know why nobody noticed earlier. You won't feel bad if you walk away from this story feeling good. You may wonder where you fit in the story.
The movie "My Old School" is opening on July 22.
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