Why wasn’t he surprised by much of what he owned in his apartment? Why did he become such a dick afterward? To say “Unknown White Male” feels disingenuous would be an understatement of the century. Everything about this film speaks of a group of people joining in on a large hoax. Doug has no memory of snow, yet can operate a video camera, which he lugs everywhere with him, which he documents every moment with.

He accepts that he lives in his basically lush apartment, yet never wonders who the dogs he owns belong to, nor does he really fear them. “Unknown White Male” is one giant jerk around, and I hate being jerked around, especially by a hackey director like Murray who seems to completely ignore logic in regards to the drama he tries to pass off as reality. And any sense of reality is undercut by the melodramatic effects and staged sequences the director inserts to explain to the audience that he’s an honest to goodness filmmaker. Then Doug’s re-discovery of life and society turns into a cheesy commentary about society and its endless running around which confuses the man with no basic memory; very subtle.

I guess it’s better for its audience to believe this is real, rather than honestly examine that there’s a good chance Murray and the crew are really just putting us on. We never find out what happened to him, and no one ever bothers to investigate beyond medical scenarios, not to mention we’re never given an explanation to how Doug’s mom died, and we’re provided with a staged sequence of him meeting his big sister for the first time which goes off without a hitch because “I just felt there was a connection.” Shit, someone call Mark Burnett, there’s a guy competing for staged reality here. Something must have happened, but they prefer not to tell us because it probably seemed arty at the time, and audiences often don’t challenge “complex” scenarios such as this.