Brace
yourself for some extreme philately. Anyone who has seen Charade knows
there are stamps out there that are valuable enough for people to kill for.
That is why his under-achieving neighbor is rather confused when a sketchy Russian
asks him to “hold on” to his rare stamp collection for an indefinite period. Confusion
and moral dilemmas abound in William J. Saunders’ documentary The Penny
Black, which premiered at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, in Park
City.
Will
used to smoke with Roman on the sidewalk outside their Los Angeles apartments.
He never really knew what the Russian did for a living precisely, but he
definitely seemed to be a tough guy. Regardless, he had no idea why Roman asked
him to hold onto a large collection of stamps. He even pointed out a few that
had recently sold at auction for tens of thousands of Dollars. Shortly
thereafter, Roman vanished from the neighborhood. A few weeks later, Will also
moved out of his apartment, taking the stamp collection with him, because he
did not know what else to do with it.
Trying
to get a handle on the situation, Will makes halting attempts to appraise the
collection, which includes the Penny Black, the world’s first stick-on stamp,
issued by the UK in 1840. The value of the collection and Roman’s mysterious
disappearance represent potential temptation for Will, who rather awkwardly
finds himself revisiting his painful relationship with his father, a convicted
con artist.
The
weird tale of Roman’s stamp collection is intriguing, but Will is a problematic
figure when it comes to carrying the film. Frankly, a development coming late
in the second act largely sabotages all the trust we might have placed in him.
Yet, on a more fundamental level, we start to distrust the documentary’s
legitimacy, because so many scenes just do not feel right—meaning we suspect
they might be staged. Will’s increasingly questionable behavior and motivations
only fuel those doubts.
Arguably,
the stakes throughout Penny Black are pretty small compared to the grand
events currently shaking our world, but the possibility Roman could suddenly
return acting like a Tarantino character maintains some level of viewer
curiosity. This is definitely one of the odder true crime docs you might watch,
if indeed there is a crime in there anywhere. We do not vouch for anything in The
Penny Black, but the curious can check it out when it screens again this
Tuesday (1/28), during Slamdance 2020.
