Oblivious to the streets of NYC, six brothers reenact Pulp Fiction in a small apartment in the lower east side of Manhattan. On another night, one of the brothers is dressing up as Batman ina costume made out of cereal boxes and yoga mats to act out a scene from The Dark Knight.
The brothers have created their own world and it is the only way they have learned to escape from their imprisoned life. The Wolfpack, released in 2015, is a documentary depicting the lifestyle of the six Angulo brothers.
They have lived in a small apartment with their parents for their entire life. Their father deems himself as enlightened and refuses to work, so the only source of income is from their mother, a licensed teacher who homeschools the six boys and receives wages through the state. None of the brothers have been to a public school or interacted with anyone else other than each other. Crystal Moselle, director of The Wolfpack, is the first outsider to ever step foot in the apartment. On rare occasions, they may go outside a few times a year in the summer or not at all, but even then, none of the boys interact with anyone else.
The brothers were kept locked away from the world by their father who had the only set of keys. The controversial father said he kept them locked away in fear of other people living in Manhattan because it was too dangerous. As time passed by, he claimed to be enlightened, andhe wanted to keep his family away from society. Makunda would spend hours watching movies such as The Dark Knight Trilogy.
Then he would type out the scripts on an old typewriter. Then the brothers would use those scripts to reenact the scenes, helping them leave the cramped apartment and travel into the world of Gotham. In sequence of the film, the brothers show a clip they made with a homemade camera of a perfect reenactment of a scene from the The Dark Knight where Joker speaks into the camera claiming he will kill more people of Gotham. “We didn’t have our world, so the movies created a new world for us,” said Narayana Angulo, one of the brothers. Makunda, who was 15 years old at the time, wanted to escape the current world they were livingin.
One day he found a way to open the front door and left the building wearing a homemade Michael Myers mask from Halloween. He didn’t want to have his father notice him if he were spotted. But, after some frightened pedestrians called the police, they found him and brought him home.The boys have been going out on their own since that day. They cannot forgive their father for the life they put them through and have been learning how to cope with life and learning cultural norms of living with other people. That is how they met Moselle.
She couldn’t overcome her curiosity of the six brothers, who looked so unique inside the world of lower Manhattan and yet seemed outside of that worldSince the documentaries release two years ago, the boys have gone from a life of solitude to a life of fame. The documentary won numerous awards, and the brothers have been touring to different screenings of the film. In one instance, they were able to meet Robert De Niro, one of their idols. They haven’t had any problems connecting with the real world. They still watch movies and love to make their own versions of some of their favorites.
“If I didn’t have movies, life would be pretty boring,” said Makunda, reflecting back on his own experience. “There wouldn’t be any point to go on. Movies opened up another world.”
