Respond to these rapid questions in our Three Identical Strangers quiz and we will tell you which Three Identical Strangers character you are. Play it now.
I have a vague personal recollection of this story from when it first made headlines in New York, and then the rest of the country, in the early 1980s. I was living in New Jersey, not far from where the action was taking place, and I was only a couple of years older than the people who were involved in it. After being mistaken for each other on nearby college campuses where they were just getting started (the full story is a little more complicated, but bear with me, and in any case, the movie tells it in detail), three identical twins discovered each other and began the fraternal relationship that had been missing for nearly two decades.
Because they were adopted by different families, Edward, Robert, and David all have different last names from one another. Their families came from upper-middle-class, middle-class, and working-class backgrounds. When the brothers were reunited after years apart, Edward’s father was a strict disciplinarian; David’s father was affectionately referred to as “Bubbalah” by all of his children. Despite their disparate upbringings, the twins had strikingly similar mannerisms, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, had similar preferences in female companions, and so on and so forth. For People magazine, “The Phil Donahue Show,” NBC’s “Today” show, and numerous other programs, all of this was like catnip to their audiences.
“Three Identical Strangers,” a documentary by Tim Wardle, includes archival footage from all of those shows, as well as other sources. These individuals were difficult to overlook at the time. After all, I had heard of them and thought, “Well, good for them, but the whole thing looks a little goofy.” That was my general impression of them. My general disdain for my own demographic peer group was not uncommon among people in my generation.
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I found myself thinking, “Well, this is all very nice, but what’s the point?” for the first hour of this film, despite the fact that my attitude was more benign than it had been earlier in the day. Is the entire film going to be archival footage of these big, grinny doofus running around New York City in the early ’80s, accompanied by the song “Walking on Sunshine” as the background music?
Three Identical Strangers Quiz
No, not at all. It certainly isn’t. One thing that will give you away is that only two of the three triplets appear in contemporary interview footage, which is a good indicator of their age. A dark turn is taken by “Three Identical Strangers,” leading not only into dysfunction and tragedy, but also into outright conspiracy.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Three Identical Strangers quiz.
Wardle employs a narrative strategy that other documentary filmmakers may find unethical, but which works exceptionally well as a narrative. In the early years of the separated triplets’ lives, he withholds one crucial element, only to reveal that the adoption agency that placed them, as well as a larger group of separated twins, did so with a specific agenda later on in the book. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that the class status of each of the families in which these triplets were placed was not chosen at random.
About the quiz
In his books The Looming Tower and Going Clear, investigative journalist Lawrence Wright tells a portion of Edward, Robert, and David’s story, which has previously been published in the New Yorker. Given that I had not previously read any of Wright’s articles on the subject, I was in a sense the ideal viewer for this film: my vague recollection of the more pop-culture friendly story was set aside in favor of the question of “whatever happened to,” which was then addressed and answered in a way that wrenched, startled, and eventually produced a sense of righteous indignation. It is possible to argue that “Three Identical Strangers,” with its frequent dramatizations, snappy editing, and song-driven soundtrack, engages in the most potentially egregious of mainstreaming devices used in contemporary documentaries. Although the story itself is juicy, and the subjects were once-famous pop culture figures, the approach feels acceptable even if it isn’t entirely “correct.” Everything else becomes secondary to the hope that the film’s subjects, all of whom are decent people, will receive some answers and justice in their respective situations.Also, you must try to play this Three Identical Strangers quiz.
For more personality quizzes check this: All The Money In The World Quiz.
