Ryan McNeil
What is it that makes you you? If you woke up tomorrow morning to discover you had an identical twin – someone with the same interests and mannerisms – would that make you mean your entire body and soul had a spare copy? What about a third? Are you still you or are you now just a genetic imprint?
It’s a question that has been pondered for time immemorial, and raises hunches about what’s in us versus what surrounds us. Nobody seems to have come up with a concrete answer of what makes our personalities what they are…but that’s not to say that some people haven’t gone to great lengths to try.
One September day in 1980, Bobby Shafran set out for his first day at a New York community college. Right away, something seemed a little strange when everybody he met was all smiles, hugs, and kisses and calling him “Eddy”. He was convinced everyone was just mixing him up for someone who looked a bit like him, until he met his new roommate. After this young man guesses Bobby’s birthday on one try, and nails that he was adopted, he hauls Bobby to a phone booth and dials a number.
That night, the two college students are several counties over…meeting Eddy: Bobby’s exact double to the degree that they realize they must be twins. Sure enough, they were both dispatched to their adoptive families by the very same adoption agency in New York.
The story is picked up by a New York newspaper – complete with a nifty picture of the reunited brothers. That story gets noticed by several people in New York City – people who can barely believe their eyes. Eddy and Bobby are the spitting image of David. Same birthday, same adoption agency, same everything.
So it goes that in 1980, three identical triplet brothers found each-other, marvelled in how much the same they were in so many respects, and established a freakishly tight bond.
However, that’s not the whole story. What needs to be asked and examined, is why any adoption agency with any heart or brains would possibly split up three siblings into separate homes. Likewise, why wouldn’t this agency tell any of the families that the child they were taking home was one of three?
The parents of each boy do take it upon themselves to start asking questions. Turns out, every question just leads to more questions…until you start to get to the questions nobody in-power wants to answer.
What’s curious about THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS is how little time it spends talking about the differences in these three men. It’s truly amazing to see three brothers raised apart come back together and all act thick-as-thieves. However, any person with a sibling knows full-well that there are so very many personality differences that can test the blood bonds. We see from scene to scene how alike these men were; what set them apart? What made working together difficult sometimes? What situations would have one rising up while another shrinks back? To take this film’s word for it, every set of identical siblings are identical down to the core…however that clearly isn’t the case, since there are only two brothers present to tell the tale.
Scene after scene likes to wink back to a publicity tour they did when they were first a tabloid sensation; a flurry of appearances where the similarities of the lads were played-up by every host, interviewer, and lookee-loo. If this isn’t to be just an extension of that tabloid tour, shouldn’t the unique qualities of the men get more than just a passing glance?
The film makes us think long and hard about our own identity, and hopes to underscore it as a silver lining to the very dark clouds that gathered to make this story come to life.
On the one hand, the film presents that we are who we are. Our biology makes evolution beyond our own composition difficult. To see these three men turn out largely the same dispels curiosities of what might have been if one was raised with more money, or better education, or more opportunities. In our quietest moments – sometimes our darkest moments – we wonder if we might have been capable of “more”. What sort of weight would lift off our shoulders if we could put such questions to rest? To know, conclusively that we were dealt a hand and that was the only one we had to play?
However, as a counterweight to that, the film supposes that it is nurture over nature that shapes who we go on to be. To a certain extent, that is true; get parents that are more involved in their children’s upbringing and education, and one can certainly conclude that it’s a causality of that child’s success. There are people out there in the world who do a bit better because their parents read to them every night, or because they were never disciplined, or because they were heavily disciplined. The problem with that though, is that while it celebrates the credit, it also assigns blame…and I don’t see that as entirely fair.
If a person has anxieties, insecurities, or darkness hardwired into their system, it will find a way to manifest…whether they are nurtured too much or not at all.
We can all point to people who nurtured us in ways that we needed, and celebrate them…but we can’t know what is happening inside those who couldn’t. To underscore their nurturing shortcomings feels selfish, and unfair.
At the end of the day, THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS wants to raise our own awareness. It wants us to think a bit more about how we became who we are, and how we might be able to run into our own long-lost-twin on a busy street tomorrow, but still retain a complicated sense of self. We are all more than the blood that runs through our veins, and more than the people who told us when to brush our teeth and go to bed. It’s almost enough to warrant deep scientific study, but in the end even that might not bring us answers.
Our sense of self is the voice we speak to ourselves in when we’re working it all out; the voice we hear in our heads when we decide which direction is best for us. We could all be only children, or one of octuplets – that voice would still be our own.
Haven’t seen this particular doc, but a few weeks back I saw one of the investigative TV shows about what was going on at that adoption agency. Wow. Turns out there were lots of twins that were purposely split up. These triplets were included, but I am curious to see this since it’s more focused on them. I admit that I’m a bit hesitant because you mentioned how it doesn’t really look into their differences. That’s disheartening since, as you said, only two of them are here to tell the story.