Starring: Alan Cumming, Lulu, past students of Bearsden Academy
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Runtime: 104 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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The astonishing true story of Scotland’s most notorious imposter. It’s 1993 and 16-year-old Brandon is the new kid in school. A perfect student, or so it’s thought.
A Scottish documentary – and the Scottish audience, especially the older Scottish audience, will remember the story from the 1990s, characters and events. Audiences beyond Scotland will not be familiar with the story.
A non-Scottish audience may be somewhat bewildered by the characters and the events told in this documentary, wondering whether it is real, whether it is true, whether it is something of a hoax. It is worth noting that it is not a hoax – the characters are real, the interviews are real, and there is great deal of television news footage from the time.
But, the situation does test credibility. And there is some ambiguity in the title – the director, Jono McLeod, did attend the school at the time of the events portrayed. But, the key to the story is the character of Brandon Lee, an older student who enrols at Bearsden Academy in the ‘90s, spending a year there, until his real identity is ultimately revealed. He was considered an older student – but staff and other students had no idea how much older.
The audience is tantalised at the opening, information given that the central character, Brandon Lee, arrives at Bearsden soon after the death on set of Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon Lee (the documentary inserting later a pointed part of an interview with Lee about death). The audience is also told that the Brandon Lee, later revealed as 32-year-old Brian MacMillan, has made an interview but refuses to be filmed – and the device is used of Scots actor, Alan Cumming, lip-syncing the speech and giving it straight to camera. Excerpts are inserted throughout the film.
Throughout the film there are a great number of interview excerpts – from staff at the school at the time, and from a number of students in the same class. In fact, they are quite entertaining in themselves, responding in a lively way to questions, their amazement, mixed memories, especially of the actress in the school production of South Pacific in which she starred with Brandon as Lt Cable. A video was made of the play and the students watch it, quite some varied memories about a kissing scene. These fellow students are in their 40s at the time of filming.
But the film also relies on actors for re-created performances and voicing some of the characters – especially British singer, Lulu, who voices the tough-minded teacher as well as singing the final credits song.
There is inventiveness in an amount of the film is animation, moving often from the real-life characters to animated versions, and recreation of scenes via animation. Which all makes for quite a combination of visual styles and experiences. and the complexities of the question of who Brandon
As the story opens up it is revealed that Brandon Lee is Brian MacMillan, who had attended the Academy 20 years earlier. He had wanted to study medicine, and this ideal pervaded through his life in years away from the school and he wanted to try again – an obsession which raises questions his mental state.
While there is the speech, delivered by Alan Cumming, there are also some scenes of MacMillan himself in the past. Of course, this was all a media sensation at the time, but it was pretty much ado about very little, because Brian MacMillan/ Brandon Lee was a hoax but not a crime.
So, a quarter of a century or more later, it is a subject of an entertaining documentary, tantalising in its story of Brian MacMillan and the role of his mother, the untangling of whether she was in on the hoax or not, and the audience meeting with an engaging array of former students.
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