At what point does playing with your identity and persona become outright fraud? For the young man known as Brandon Lee, there seemed to be a very narrow distinction between them – and for his classmates at Bearsden College, a middle-class high school in an affluent suburb of Scotland, the distinction was even narrower, since their introduction to their peculiar new classmate, supposedly the son of a famous Canadian opera singer who recently perished, leading him to take up residence with his delightful Glaswegian grandmother, was immediate cause for concern. Any of his peers will immediately tell you that there was something peculiar about Brandon – mainly because he wasn’t the sixteen-year-old Brandon at all, but rather Brian MacKinnon, a middle-aged failed medical student from that very same city, who decided to masquerade as a teenager, enrolling (for some deranged reason) in the same school that he had attended over a decade previously. For over a year, he managed to fool not only his classmates, who were oblivious to the fact that their charming new friend was actually double their age, but also the teachers, many of whom had previously taught him years before, but seemed singularly unable to recognize him, mistaking his ferocious intelligence and undeniable charisma as being nothing more than a gift, rather than the result of a world-weary life, of which he had already lived a considerable amount before deciding to reinvent himself. The Brandon Lee scandal caused quite a stir in the 1990s when it was discovered, and has now been revisited in the form of My Old School, which was conceived and directed by Jono McLeod, one of Brandon’s former classmates who was himself a victim of his lies, and thus made a film that struck a very personal chord. It’s one of the year’s most ambitious films, a daring and provocative documentary that investigates a scandal that may not have been particularly malicious, but certainly caused enough of a stir for it to become a major event, enough to warrant this kind of delightfully intriguing investigation.

It seems almost appropriate that a film about the Brandon Lee scandal would traverse the boundaries between fact and fiction – it tells a true story (or at least as true as possible), but makes use of a very creative structure, with McLeod working around some of the obstacles that he was presented with – the fact that Bearsden Academy had been demolished years prior, the lack of footage from that period, and one very unique aspect that we’ll discuss in a moment – and turning them into bold artistic decisions. Everything that we can possibly know about Brandon Lee/Brian MacKinnon we already have access to – his reasons for his actions, and the decisions he made leading up to it (as well as the process he took in order to create this false identity) are all public knowledge, based on the exposure he received at the time, meaning that My Old School was never aiming to be an investigation that unearths the secrets or presents shocking revelations, but rather acting as a peculiar recounting of the events, as seen through the eyes of the people who had experienced it – the film features prominent interviews with many of his classmates and a couple of teachers from the school that were still alive, as well as Brandon himself, whose presence in the film is quite unique. He was actively involved in its production, and quite happily offered to take part through being interviewed – his only caveat being that he refused to appear on camera, but would grant an audio-only interview, which serves as the main pipeline through the film. As a result, we see the presence of Alan Cumming, the brilliant actor who was actually cast as Brandon Lee in the 1990s when the story was initially courted as a narrative film. That production fell through, but Cumming ultimately still managed to get the role, albeit not in the way that anyone may have expected – and his participation is mainly to portray Brandon Lee, lip-syncing to the audio interview, which gives the film a sense of peculiarity that works in its favour.

It’s difficult to shake the feeling of absurdity that drives this film, which seems to be something that McLeod is actively leaning into. A director without much experience in cinema, having mainly worked on small-scale documentary series made for television over the course of his career – and it was doubly difficult, considering it was such a media sensation in the 1990s, where every news show and publication analysed each aspect of the story to the point where they were often repeating the same information, making it a challenge to say something new with the material. Yet, McLeod finds a way to turn this story into a thrilling and compelling documentary, creating a film that is both entertaining and quite scintillating – a lot of this comes through in the creative aspects. A large portion of the film is animated, with recreations of Bearsden Academy and the younger versions of the people being interviewed, Brandon Lee himself. It adds a level of playfulness to the story, immediately setting us at ease in a way that suggests that even if there are dark secrets lurking beneath this film, it isn’t anything entirely sinister, and that it is more a case of a bizarre story that proves that reality of often stranger than fiction, and that its sometimes those stories that are most implausible that are rooted in reality – and the exploits of the man masquerading as Brandon Lee is one such story, which has been captured with a certain degree of existential resonance by a director who clearly an unabashedly feels very strongly about the subject, perhaps as a result of being a victim of his deceit, which makes him one of the foremost authorities in telling this story and exploring its many thorny details, which are emcompassed so wonderfully in this vibrant and captivating (and oddly very funny) examination of his very brief but memorable return to the education system – most of the time when a former pupil returns to their alma maters, it is either as a visitor or to teach, so the idea of someone not only returning to high school over a decade later, but the same one in which they were enrolled, is thrilling enough on its own, and McLeod makes sure that every aspect of his account of these events is memorable.

The most integral element of a documentary is that, when they are available, one should always try and get access to as many primary sources as they can – and in the case of Brandon Lee’s story, all the material that could be used to explore the scandal are relatively paltry, existing mainly in a series of interactions he had with people over the years, many of whom had passed on (such as his mother, who herself took on the role of his grandmother in public), meaning that nearly all the sources McLeod had to go on were testimonies of Brandon Lee’s classmates, many of whom willingly appear as themselves in this film, actively discussing their recollections of their time with this young (or rather not-so-young) man, reflecting on how he managed to fool them, as well as remarking on the peculiar signs that indicated something was amiss, but which they had initially ignored as nothing more than trivial confusion, which actually turns out to be steadfast suspicions. Their recollections are insightful and funny, and the film frequently draws our attention to the more humorous aspects of the events – what Brian MacKinnon did was morally reprehensible, but it was also oddly hilarious if we look at it objectively, and the comedic side of it is not lost on anyone in the film, especially not his former classmates, who recount their experiences with an almost loving sense of memory – for teenagers growing up in a place as ordinary as Bearsden, such a scandal was likely a highlight of their high school years, and while there are undeniable ethical implications of what MacKinnon did in his efforts to transform into Brandon Lee, the film doesn’t sensationalize it to the point where it is made to appear like some act of immensely dangerous, perilous crime – but not for the sake of Brandon Lee (who is viewed as a relatively pathetic, insecure young man with clear signs of pathological dishonesty), but rather the people most directly affected by his actions. It’s not a victimless crime, but it is one where the victims themselves are almost enthralled in having had direct access to one of Scotland’s most interesting cases of false identity, peering at the past with a sense of fondness that shows that the only person truly disadvantaged by these actions was Brian McKinnon himself, who by all accounts now lives the kind of sad, lonely life that he was actively trying to avoid, but put upon himself through choosing perhaps the most inane, and quite frankly idiotic, ways of reinventing himself for his ulterior motives.

Perhaps the best way to describe the story of Brandon Lee is under the sensationalistic adage of “you can’t make this stuff up” – and you certainly can’t find many events more strange or outrageous than this one. If anything, the viewer would not be amiss to believe that what we’re seeing here is entirely a fabrication, one of the many hilariously irreverent mockumentaries that tackle the most absurd subjects for the sake of humour. The realization that absolutely everything in this film is true is astonishing, and immediately makes us wonder how far someone will be willing to go to change their identity and start a new life, as well as the vast number of people who managed to achieve it without being caught, which is a terrifying and unsettling thought that this film makes sure to subtly implant in our minds. We’ll all start to look at that mysterious co-worker who never attends work functions, or the oddly quiet student that is always perched in the back corner, a little more closely – and while one would imagine the Brandon Lee scandal was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (since it took a significant degree of intrepidity to actually achieve such an enormous masquerade), we can never be too sure about the people we encounter in everyday life. My Old School is an absolute delight – wickedly funny, deeply profound and always captivating in a way that only a well-made documentary can be, it’s one of the year’s most delightful hidden gems, and a film that warrants some attention, not only because of the sheer absurdity of the story, but the ideas that the director and his participants begin to explore alongside their accounts of their experiences at the forefront of the Brandon Lee scandal – socio-economic structure and the role of identity in defining an individual are all very much factors in this story, and we find ourselves engrossed in trying to uncover the secrets that lurk beneath the surface, even if we know almost immediately what we are going to find on the other side of the grand revelation, which is always a sign of not only a terrific documentary, but a strong work of investigative storytelling as a whole.