Written and directed by Claus Räfle
Starring Max Mauff, Alice Dwyer, Ruby O. Fee
Running time: 1 hour and 50 minutes
MPAA rating: not rated

by Deborah Krieger

In terms of narrative technique, The Invisibles comes across as a sort of reverse American Animals. Both films combine documentary interviews with extensive staged reenactments of real events, going beyond the more usual methods (as seen in documentaries like 1971 where we aren’t meant to connect with the staged portions of the movie as much as they exist to give us a break from endless talking heads after the fact. Yet the choices made in how to balance reenactment footage—to allow it to make the movie almost a biopic—distinguish American Animals and The Invisibles, resulting in films of distinctly different quality. American Animals is mainly a fictionalized narrative film, and it only uses interviews with the real people who attempted to steal the Audubon book sparingly, chiefly to remind us that everyone involved has their own version of the story. Even the narrative parts starring Evan Peters (who was robbed of awards attention for this role) are told through a specific lens: the filmmaker’s. American Animals is as much about the unreliability of our own personal narratives as it is about a failed book robbery. The Invisibles, sadly, comes across as extremely didactic, as if it is inherently unsure of why so much of the movie is reenacted by professional actors.