My Friend Paul

This personal film brings two childhood friends together, one a filmmaker, the other a bank robber. The friendship between these two is touching, but also challenging for the friends as they explore their childhood and the road ahead. Really grabbed me, very compelling!!

Directed by Jonathan Berman and focusing on Paul S, this film is a brisk 58 minutes and covers a lot of ground. I would suggest for anyone who has had a difficult friend that you loved.

Set in New York City in 1998, this provides an interesting background and time capsule. Also, archival footage follows the pair growing up in 70's Brooklyn. Very cool interviews with friends from the neighborhood, all who chose very different paths.

Jonathan Berman is a young film-maker with writer's block, when he hears from his old friend Paul, now in jail for a series of non-violent bank robberies. Berman decides to explore their childhood friendship and re-connect with Paul (soon to be released from prison), and to film it as a documentary project.

What emerges is a complex relationship between these two old friends. Paul is charming and charismatic, but also, as slowly becomes increasingly clear to both filmmaker Baerman and the audience, delusional, bi-polar, very difficult to actually help, and just a little bit creepy. Berman is willing to acknowledge the fine edge between helping Paul and exploiting him for the film, his (understandably) confused feelings about his old friend, and his being at a loss at how to help him settle into the real world.

Short, (maybe even too short) at 52 minutes, I was always interested, and wanted to know even more about both men.

One framing device that is happenstance, but adds a real layer of emotion are clips from the super 8 movies Berman made as a kid, playing cops and robbers with Paul, and seeing echoes of the man he will actually become in those films.

An honest and worthy exploration of both the subject and the film-maker himself.

In this Documentary, the filmmaker is struggling with a creative block and invites his boyhood friend Paul to come stay with him in New York. Paul is being released soon from a Federal Prison in Massachusetts where he has done time for bank robbery and John hopes to make a film about him. When Paul arrives in New York and agrees to be the subject of the film, the filmmaker discovers that Paul is not entirely reformed and that he's in for more than he bargained for.

I have dealt with friends and family that are struggling with mental illness and this film struck a chord with me. It truly portrays the sense of helplessness that one has when one realizes that there are some conditions that cannot be cured. While one still cares for the individuals involved, one has a longing to distance oneself from those who make us feel helpless. I recommend this film to any that are involved in the same type of struggle or any that wish to understand what it is like.

Before I saw this film, I read the synopsis and thought this documentary seems a bit contrived and could possibly be your run of the mill reunion story. But the more I watched, the more I was intrigued and ultimately touched by the reality of what I was watching on screen. It showed a director who tried to gain control of his film, losing control of both his film and his relationship with his friend. And I was amazed by the way Paul was represented through the lens of the camera, through unbiased eyes, loving, and kind, perhaps the way a friend would have seen Paul. This movie was an extraordinarily poignant film that revealed a lot more than it had meant to do in the beginning.