The Wolfpack of Manhattan

The Wolfpack, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, is one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction documentaries that come along on the rare occasion a filmmaker happens to be in the right place at the right moment. In 2010, Crystal Moselle, the film’s director, bumped into six of the Angulo siblings — boys, then aged about 11 to 18 — on one of their rare trips outside and befriended them.

Eventually, they allowed her to bring a camera inside the apartment. “I was their first friend, and I think they were as fascinated by me as I was by them,” Moselle said. “Slowly their mom warmed up. The dad was definitely a roller coaster.”

Lending extra resonance to The Wolfpack is one detail in particular. When they were not being home schooled by their mother, the boys — Bhagavan, Govinda, Narayana, Mukunda, Krisna and Jagadesh — and their sister, Visnu, were allowed to watch movies non-stop, on DVDs.

Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese gave them a window to the world (a warped one in some cases) and injected badly needed doses of creativity into their lonely, claustrophobic lives.

“It’s fascinating what the human spirit does when it’s confined,” Moselle said. “The downside to all the movies — and they have seen, like, 5,000 — is that there are certain formulas to them. Real life is different. In real life, the girl doesn’t always break your heart. The boys are still struggling to understand that.”

Mukunda Angulo, 20, said the film accurately represented his family but declined to comment further. Susanne Angulo, the mother, who travelled to Sundance (with at least a couple of her sons), agreed. “Yes,” she answered when asked if her children were kept inside to the severe degree The Wolfpack describes. “I probably should not comment further,” she added. Efforts to reach the father, Oscar Angulo, were unsuccessful.

The Angulo siblings come across in The Wolfpack as articulate, sensitive and extremely likable. At times, whether lost in role play in the apartment or heaped in a pile on a mattress to watch television, they can also seem a bit feral. A few speak, at times, with a cadence that is slightly off kilter. They clearly love their mother, who is presented as being controlled to the same degree that they are. “There were more rules for me than for them,” Susanne says quietly on camera.

Dad is more complicated. In the film, he speaks very briefly and doesn’t make much sense. A Peruvian immigrant and Hare Krishna devotee, Oscar is depicted as a paranoid man who struggles with alcohol. He believes his children will be “contaminated” if they are let into New York City. “We wanted to tell the truth without making too many judgements,” Moselle, 34, said. “Believe me, I could have really gone off on the guy.”

She added: “The thing is, these brothers are some of the most gentle, insightful, curious people I’ve ever met. Something was clearly done right.”

The Angulo children, all of whom still live at home except for Govinda, 22, according to Moselle, are shown struggling with resentment toward their father. Narayana at one point says, “There are some things you just don’t forgive.” Later, he worries about “being so ignorant of the world that I won’t be able to handle it”.

Viewers are likely to wonder whether the children suffer psychological problems. The Wolfpack suggests the answer is yes but does not elaborate.

Moselle said she first met the brothers in 2010 as they walked “in a pack” down First Avenue. All of them were wearing black Ray-Ban sunglasses inspired by Reservoir Dogs, and their long hair was blowing in the wind. “I just started running after them,” she said.

To divulge how the Angulos happened to be out of the house that day would move into spoiler territory. The Sundance programming guide does disclose that “everything changes when one of the brothers escapes and the power dynamics in the house are transformed”.