Misha and the Wolves
There’s a term for a certain kind of book: “misery lit,” in which authors reveal lives marred by trauma, heartbreak, and abuse. Not surprisingly, every now and then one of these acclaimed bestsellers is discovered to be fiction, with various authors exaggerating their own stories or fabricating them altogether. Some of these memoirs exploit collective tragedies like the Holocaust. There have been at least four fake memoirs that have slipped under the radar, Misha and the Wolves is just one out of those four, and now it’s being dissected as a metafictional documentary by filmmaker Sam Hobkinson.
At first the story is deceptively straightforward: in the late 1980s a Belgian couple moved to a suburb in Massachusetts. The wife, Misha Defonseca, began sharing stories of surviving the Holocaust and was encouraged to put those experiences into a book. In 1997, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years was released to great acclaim and fortune. At one-point Oprah came knocking, offering a segment on her show. Book tours, speaking opportunities and a movie followed. So did lawsuits and controversy.
Eleven years later, the jig was up and the real story behind its creation was exposed, causing Defonseca’s celebrity to crumble. Hobkinson prods deeper behind the scenes, revealing layers of deceit, greed, and fantasy. There are several players involved with unwinding the ultimate mystery behind Defonseca’s story. Some of them are clear-eyed and forthcoming, others are nothing more than players. In a certain regard Misha and the Wolves is both a chapter book and game, with more of an intention to shock than fully explore why these deceptions took place. By the time it’s over the collective reaction is more likely to be linked to how it’s presented rather than the story itself.
Hoaxes are a dime a dozen, and in comparison, to classic docs on fraud like F For Fake or more recent fare like Author: The JT Leroy Story or There Are No Fakes, Misha struggles to differentiate itself or seem as urgent. Perhaps it’s the timing. Large-scale deceptions seem to happen every day. What’s more, many could take the jaded view that Defonseca would be quickly exposed on the Internet as opposed to twenty years ago.
Hobkinson isn’t interested in timely relevance although there are references to “mythomania,” alternate realties and “alternative facts.” His main concern is building a modern mystery while teasing a final twist. He punctuates the story with shots repeating themselves, stilted recreations, and photographs of Defonseca on a detective-style evidence board, linked by pins and string. It takes patience to reach the heart of the matter, and whether it’s worth the wait is debatable.