My Old School (2022): Who IS that Guy?

The chorus to Steely Dan’s My Old School concludes: “… And I’m never going back to my old school.” The new documentary My Old School - about an unusual incoming student at a posh high school in suburban Glascow thirty years ago - turns that sentiment on its head! What happened after he arrived has become legendary.

The story made a big splash in the news when it came to light in the mid-1990s, particularly in the UK and especially in Scotland.  Soon after, a narrative movie based on these events,was planned ,with young Alan Cumming signed to play the new kid, a fellow named Brandon Lee.  But that got scotched (sorry) when the needed releases could not be obtained. 

This time around, as I said,  My Old School is not a fictionalized dramatization, but a creatively constructed documentary written and directed by Jono McLeod, a former BBC journalist.  Not incidentally, McLeod not only attended Bearsden (pronounced “bears den”) Academy, the school where the story takes place, but he was one of Brandon Lee’s classmates at the time, which may partially account for the title (which, by the way, was actually inspired by the Steely Dan song). He recruited a bunch of his other classmates - all now in their mid-40s - to share their remarkably vivid recollections of Brandon Lee and his exploits (if they can be called that) during the nearly two years that they knew him, as well as their incredulity upon learning who “Brandon” really was. For, as it turns out,  he was quite the imposter.   Then too, McLeod enlisted Brandon himself to tell his side of the story – not just the how, but the why.  All of which makes for quite an interesting tale.

The story is told in two parts. In the first part we hear and see what happened when Brandon Lee first appears at Bearsden Academy and is introduced to his classmates. In the second half, we learn something about the true story: who Brandon really was/is, why he was there, how he was able to fool everyone – not just his classmates, but the teachers and school administrators as well; along with the astonished reactions when his deception is discovered; and how all this impacted “Brandon” himself. 

The students are in their penultimate year in secondary school, more or less the equivalent of eleventh grade in the USA.   These teenagers, around 15 - 16 years old at the time, are locals who’ve been in school together for quite awhile.  They are curious about the new kid, who seems, at first glance, something of a weird duck: tall, shy, a bit dorky in his manner and dress, odd looking – with a pasty face, that makes him seem older than the other students, and with an odd not-Scots accent. He’s from Canada, he explains. All agree, including the teachers, that he is preternaturally smart and knowledgeable. He is also very nice, even to the social outcasts - youngsters like Stefan, a Black kid whose friendship with Brandon shielded him from the bullying and racist attitudes he had previously endured. Pretty soon, to everyone’s surprise – even, perhaps, his own - Brandon is accepted as a kind of a nerdy cool guy – one who has a memorable and generally positive influence on his friends.

Until the bubble bursts during his second year and they learn that he's a fraud. But that is something you
need to experience for yourself. No spoilers here.

Just as interesting is how McLeod overcame some of the innate difficulties in translating this material into a compelling movie. This is what makes My Old School something special, in my view. One problem he faced was “Brandon’s” refusal to appear on camera.  Nearly thirty years on, Alan Cumming was still interested, so McLeod has him play Brandon on screen, sitting in a classroom designed to look just like those back in the halcyon 90s, and lip-synching the real (not-real)  Brandon’s recorded reminiscences as he recounts his version of the story. And Cumming, a consummate actor, is fantastic, not just at the lip-synching part, but in his manner and expression while doing so. 

And rather than simply filming his former classmates - a bunch of other middle-aged ladies and gents – as talking heads or suchlike, McLeod sets them in the faux classroom too, individually or in groups of two or three; and then, as they relate their eyewitness tales of “Brandon”, he uses period appropriate animation to bring those recollections to life. As they tell their stories, we see them as cartoon high schoolers living their experiences – periodically cutting to their adult selves as they wryly and somewhat bemusedly talk about it.  Odd how an artificial medium like animation can make a story like this more real, but it does! 

A similar technique was used to great effect in last year’s award-winning animated documentary feature Flee, about an Afghan refugee trying to make it to safety in Europe . But Flee was a story very unlike than this one  – an emotional tale of hardship, desperation, perseverance and hope. My Old School has a different trajectory. The tone is initially rather lighthearted, almost jaunty in the way many schooldays recollections can be, and although there is an undeniable emotional element to some of the speakers’ memories, this is spread among many narrators and lacks a similar depth of feeling. But Brandon’s charade, as it turns out, was something of a desperate move on his part, and the effect of its collapse on his subsequent life results in a gently heartbreaking conclusion. 

My only disappointment with My Old School was with the sound quality of the spoken words. It was very muddy.  I must admit that I’ve got a moderate hearing deficit and wear hearing aids, but with them, I usually do all right. (Which is why I almost never mention this in my reviews.) Here, however, I initially had a very hard time deciphering what was being said. The thick Scottish accent of most of the speakers was, no doubt, a contributing factor (Cummins being a notable exception). But after considerable fiddling with an audio equalizer, the voices became more intelligible and I was able to enjoy the film. If you go see this movie in theaters, try to find one with an up-to-date, high quality sound system. If you watch it at home, you might want to turn on subtitles/close captioning.  

At any rate, I wound up liking My Old School. It reminded me of the documentary Three Identical Strangers (2018), about triplets separated at birth, in its intrigue and its ability to put us in the shoes of the protagonist narrators as, years after the fact, they each unravel - to their utter astonishment - what had happened to them. In My Old School, the narrators are still amazed at the tale they are telling. Understandably so.

1 hour 44 minutes 

Grade: B+

In select theaters as of July 22, and in  general release beginning Friday, July 29, 2022.

Streaming begins July 22 (Streaming platform currently unknown).