Finders Keepers

There seems to be a lot of documentaries made these days, and even some movies look like doccos. The premise of Finders Keepers is odd, but the tagline/blurb of this film tells little about what it is: a weird human interest/recovery story from NC/SC. Unlike a lot of documentaries based around simple folk, the makers really draw you into responding emotionally to the characters in this one, whether it be annoyance, revulsion or admiration.

Finders Keepers has the right mix of humour, TV/news footage and one on one face camera/narrative dialogue to tell an engaging story of the media, greed, missed opportunities and redemption. The documentary makers keep the necessary distance from the subjects to allow the story to unfold naturally.

It is worth watching and talking about afterwards, especially if you are interested in embalmed feet.

Finders Keepers is the best comedy of tragic idiots that the Coen brothers never had the chance to make. It's certainly not the most important documentary of the year, and it might not end up being the best, but it'll most likely be the most entertaining. Though even while it makes you laugh from the farcical nature of the situation, there's a thoughtful social commentary that studies many harsh aspects of the human condition.

In a horrific plane crash that took his father's life, John Wood's leg was amputated, and in a very unorthodox request John asked to keep his limb to shred it to the bone and use it for a memorial for his father. John went through the long process of preserving it and keeping it safe in a grill only to lose that grill with the leg inside as he got behind storage locker payments where he kept both.

Amateur entrepreneur and all-round hustler Shannon Whisnant happened to purchase that storage locker and refused to give the leg back to John despite polite and reasonable requests. With all the attention, he sees it as an opportunity to make his millions using it as a tourist attraction and even invites John on the deal. When an agreement is not settled, it's taken to be one of the most unique legal battles the courts have ever seen. Can one really buy someone else's body parts?

Most everyone else in the documentary finds the situation bafflingly bizarre including John, and it's hilarious, though interesting to see what the foot means to these various people. Any reaction you have is reflected in a ideally sourced clip from the media. If it weren't for solid proof it happened, you'd think it was a perfectly scripted mockumentary. Much of the men's conflict is shown on television, both in candid media appearances and on televised courtrooms. In the world of Finders Keepers – television caused, provoked and then solves their problems.

While John has his own human interest story, the source of the bizarre conflict is from Shannon's lifetime ambition to be an everyday television personality, despite how absolutely unlikely it is. There's a deep undercurrent of bittersweetness in how the dreams of fame and fortune can cloud someone and drive them to such madness, even though it's so utterly far from their grasp. The genius of the film is that it studies Shannon eventually tasting it, and ironically through the film itself, and it rings painfully true in the absurdity of those ambitions that we can all admit to at some times.

The film certainly does paint Shannon as the bad guy but John is no saint. He's a drug addict and throughout most of the film's chronology of events, it's pointed out that he's high, something that tears his family apart. They're both such efficiently funny characters in their outlandish statements that they don't have to try, but they're also deeply poignant in their human flaws. The direction from J. Clay Tweel and Bryan Carberry compliments both sides, balancing our sympathies.

However, the filmmakers don't catch up to date with our subjects until about an hour into the film when the drama is seemingly resolved. Fortunately, it has more personal reconciliation to explore and that's where the film finds its most compelling moments as the people we've been following find some hope beyond the foot. The Coens would not have offered such satisfying resolutions so it's a treat to have this stranger than fiction story in this tightly constructed documentary form that breezes by with equal substance.

8/10

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We often see on internet news websites little bits and snips of "weird news", things that seem too bizarre, too inexplicable to be real. The story of John Wood and Shannon Whisnant is one of these stories. Through this documentary, we get a rare glimpse into the lives of the people behind the strange and altogether unlikely series of events that brought two very different men from Carolina together in a battle over, of all things, an amputated leg.

John Wood lost his leg in a fatal plane crash that saw the father he loved, Tom, die. Already a troubled man, the trauma of the crash sent him over the edge, with drug abuse and alienation from his family causing him to enter into a downward spiral. Eventually, everything he owned ended up in a storage unit. Desperate for something to have to reconcile with the event, he took claim of his own amputated limb, and eventually preserved it through a bit of backwoods mummification. It was among the possessions in the shed that was eventually sold to a wheeling-dealing haggler named Shannon Whisnant. Discovering the foot in an old grill, Shannon claimed ownership of the foot after it was discovered to be a medically amputated limb. John wanted it back. The ensuing media attention to the story would change the lives of both men, though to the public at large, it was just another story of Southern-fried strangeness and backwoods idiocy.

Starting with the story of the leg itself, the strange set of circumstances which saw it amputated from its owner and its backwoods method of mummification, the documentary then transitions into the story of the battle over the severed leg, before examining the lives of two men who are, at their core, damaged in more ways than just physical scars and amputated appendages. John, a recovering addict who desperately sought the approval and love of his parents. Shannon, physically abused by his father, like many people in the age of reality television and internet broadcasting desperately seeks fame and recognition.

Although it is an easy trap for many to focus solely on the lurid details of the leg and the battle for it that ensued shortly thereafter, the documentary succeeds in telling a story that you aren't likely to see on reality TV or the internet, examining the lives of both men in an ultimately sympathetic way. About the only fault that can be said for the film is that, while the story is interesting, the documentary becomes thoroughly average. Neither terrible nor exemplary, it succeeds at telling its story from a new and refreshing angle, but the tale it tells is simply not one that is overwhelmingly engrossing. It's competent, and it does an excellent job of taking a look at its subjects in a way that no one prior had even bothered to attempt. But there is only so much story you can get out of the struggle over a severed foot. That and perhaps it is a little too lenient in its examination of the exploitation of these two men by a news and entertainment media that was clearly interested only in the bloody details.

I can't fault this really stunning documentary.

When the director stumbled across the numerous eccentric characters who made up this film, I'm sure he couldn't have believed his luck.

However instead of ridiculing the characters, he sensitively lets them tell their own stories in their own way.

Make no mistake - the end result will make you laugh out loud, which is why you should watch it in a crowd. However much of the humour comes from the editing rather than cheap shots at the characters' expense, and you will find yourself respecting both them and the director.

You'll also spend much of the movie thinking you are watching a mockumentary, since most of the stars are outstandingly telegenic, and the story - well it's too bizarre to be fiction.

The soundtrack is superb, as are the editing, the direction, the way the clips are woven into a story with a history and an ending, the attention to detail, and even the camera work.

Happy to give up a couple of hours of my time to this movie, and anything else by the same director.

You all know about the popular joke about North Carolina......'If me 'n Jolene gets divorced is she still my cousin?' Well.....................after you see this movie you'll be saying to yourself that EVERYTHING you previously heard about that state is PROBABLY true....REALLY!!