Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (Dir: Kurt Kuenne)

The story at the center of this documentary is devastating. The Bagby family undergoes a horrific tragedy that was certainly hell to live through and to continue to live with. So while my deepest sympathies extend to the long-suffering Bagbys, I find the film based on their story to be seriously deficient and tone deaf. Part of the problem lies in director Kuenne's closeness to his subject. A personal friend of the Bagby family, he doesn't approach the story as a journalist, but as a man with an axe to grind. And while we understand the source of his anger by film's end, it overshadows his objectivity. He is frequently snide and dismissive. The tragedy at the film's center is done a disservice by Kuenne's frequent caricatures.

Stepping onscreen in your own documentary is problematic as it quickly discounts your objectivity. It telegraphs to the audience that you may be too close to your subjects to treat their story fairly. Unless the film is about you--and Dear Zachary is not as much about Kuenne as he seems to think it is--it's also distracting. The film presents a very narrow picture of its subject Andrew Bagby--a man who did no wrong and was loved by everyone--that it is hard to not suspect Kuenne of hagiography. The director's greatest success is in letting the parents of Andrew vent, get angry, and weep on camera. These are the film's most unvarnished and believable moments.

The film's central conceit, as well, is dreadfully misguided. The film is ostensibly a video keepsake for Andrew's son showing the boy how much his father is loved and cherished by friends and family. So the film's divergence into repeatedly telling the boy what a she-devil his mom was comes off as unnecessarily cruel. This view of the mother begins to gain traction as the film progresses--and its inclusion slightly more justified--but it's glaringly out of place in the letter to the boy. The film morphs from letter to a son to angry director with an axe to grind making its central conceit seem unnecessary and manipulative.

Decidedly tragic, but tone deaf. An unpleasant experience.