[TIFF 2023] FLIPSIDE -- Wonderfully Poignant Documentary Constructed From Other Materials

Review by Sean Boelman

Many people probably don’t recognize the name of indie documentarian Chris Wilcha. His first film, The Target Shoots First, achieved moderate success on the festival circuit, and then he went on to help adapt Ira Glass’s This American Life for television before fading into obscurity. His newest documentary, Flipside, is one hell of a comeback — an extraordinary little documentary with a creative approach you might not see coming.

The title of the documentary, Flipside, refers to the record shop at which the filmmaker worked as a teenager. However, this is so much more than a documentary about the dying bastion of culture that is the record store. It ends up becoming a personal journey through Wilcha’s past — using the record store as a starting point and a symbol for the mid-life crisis Wilcha is experiencing.

Early on in the movie, viewers will start to recognize other story threads coming through. Of course, there is the autobiography of Wilcha as a filmmaker, and his journey from being a seeming phenom to an anonymous director of commercials. Then there’s also segments detailing the lives of television writer David Milch and photographer Herman Leonard.

Eventually, Wilcha reveals the movie’s true nature: it is a construction of all the projects that he had abandoned over the years, whether it be due to loss of funding, or a decision to take the “comfortable” route of the “day job.” It’s an ingenious concept, and Wilcha uses it to create an extraordinary ode to what it means to take a risk and pursue one’s dreams.

Wilcha’s journey is likely to be relatable to a lot of audiences. After all, who is exactly where they want to be in life? However, Wilcha’s ability to comb through the rubble of what once was and create something as beautiful and poignant as Flipside is nothing short of inspiring. Out of record store nostalgia bait and by-the-numbers biographies came a rousing meditation on the many forks in the road we face in life.

And while this may seem like an affair that’s either sad or sentimental — and there is a little bit of both throughout — it’s really just incredibly hopeful. Wilcha is a reminder that, even when things don’t go according to plan and you fall from the top of the world, there’s always a way to get back up.

That’s not to say the movie is perfect. It does take some time for all the pieces of the puzzle to come together into the picture that Wilcha hopes to paint. However, once it all ties together, it becomes clear that he has made what might be one of the most creative and ambitious documentaries in recent memory.

Flipside finds success in the most unlikely of places: failure. For those who view the film and are creatives themselves, they’re likely to have a “graveyard” of lost creative projects of their own. Although an approach as radical as Wilcha’s is unlikely to work more than once — it feels like a real lightning in a bottle type of miracle — maybe it’s time to think of these lost ideas in a different way; not as failure, but as a greater part of ourselves.

Flipside is screening at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs September 7-17 in Toronto, Canada.

​Rating: 4.5/5