Review of Three Identical Strangers (2018) by Arnchise — 09 Jul 2020
Three Identical Strangers tells the story of triplets who were separated at birth and adopted out to three different families who end up finding each 19 years later. When the parents and triplets start looking into the circumstances of their adoption, they uncover a horrible experiment that raises questions about medical ethics.
Watching this documentary, I couldn't stop feeling heartbroken at how this dangerous experiment effected their mental health and how this experiment turned unwilling participants into lab rats. From the adoptive parents to the triplets.
As the documentary goes on, one of the triplets story, Eddy, I found especially horrifying. The effect of this experiment had on him to point were he commented suicide just broke my heart. The documentary ends posing the question how many other twins were separated at birth because of this experiment and should these twins find out that they were indeed a part of this experiment? It's a long lasting question that I struggle to answer because weighing up the ethical problems of keeping twins separated compared to the mental health problems that face these twins once they find out about the experiment they were a part of is a delicate juggling act.
The documentary does have some problems though. An underlying theme of the documentary is the nature vs nurture debate. One of the ways in which the documentary discusses this debate is Eddy's suicide and the role in which Eddy's father played in it.
The way the documentary framed that part of the story is that Eddy's father played a role in his suicide through the way in which he raised Eddy. I feel this is incredibly unfair on Eddy's father as it moves the focus away from the experiment.
It's especially heart breaking watching Eddy's father telling the story of when he found out his son had committed suicide in the frame the documentary created that says that Eddy's father played a role in it.
The documentary also brushed over that Bobby, one of the triplets, played a role in a murder. the documentary talks about it for at most 30 seconds and doesn't touch on it again. However, despite these faults, I found the documentary to be an excellent insight into a horrible experiment that raises important questions about medical ethics and nature vs nurture.
This review of Three Identical Strangers (2018) was written by Arnchise on 09 July 2020.
Three Identical Strangers has generally received very positive reviews.
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