Crazy Love
With issues-based features having dominated documentary filmmaking and distribution over the past few years, it’s refreshing to encounter a biographical tale enjoying a relatively broad release around Melbourne, if only at our art-house cinemas.
You may already be aware of the odd and disturbing tale of Linda Rish and Burt Pugach, dating back to the fifties, as featured in Dan Klores’s documentary Crazy Love. If not, it’s bound to be an astonishing discovery. Be prepared for some startling twists and turns.
The interview subjects in this film are so candid, that it’s difficult to avoid feeling like a voyeur of sorts. But somehow you can’t look away: it’s such an engrossing story in its own right, yet it manages to raise some interesting issues.
However, the director’s reliance on archival visual material to elucidate and draw you into the story – though effective - may actually belie the complex issues that emerge from this documentary, and which, perhaps, should have been explored further.
After the nostalgic stock footage and quaint old black-and-white photos had faded from the screen, what was left for this viewer, was a rather unpleasant after-taste.
Are Burt and Linda soul mates or sadists? Is Crazy Love the story of an uncommonly protracted infatuation or is it a salacious tale of obsessional “love” ? Is it a chilling example of the need for women to be economically independent or, quite simply, a Freudian case study? Perhaps it’s all of the above, or none at all. Maybe it’s nothing more than a gripping tale.
Whether you come out loving or hating this film (or the people in it), one thing’s for sure: schedule enough time for a coffee afterwards, because this is a story that’s bound to capture your interest and spur lengthy discussions.
Crazy Love premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and won the Best Documentary award at the 2007 Santa Barbara Film Festival. A well-deserved accolade? You be the judge. But I wonder: will you be judging the film, or will you judge Burt and Linda?