MY OLD SCHOOL

UK, 2022, 104 minutes, Colour.

Alan Cumming, Lulu, past students of Bearsden Academy.

Directed by Jono McLeod.

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. In order to enjoy the film better, it is worth noting that it is not a hoax, that 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, but his real identity ultimately revealed. He was considered an older student – but staff and other students of the school 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, revealed as 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 inserted throughout the film.

Also, throughout the film there are a great number of interview excerpts, from staff at the school at the time, and from quite a number of fellow 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 also inventiveness in that quite 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, visual experiences, and the complexities of the question of who Brandon Lee is, his story of his opera singing mother, his professor father, his life in Canada with his mother, their deaths, his coming to the school. And his coming to the school while living with his grandmother.

So, with the opening up of the story, the revelation about Brandon Lee being Brian MacMillan, at the Academy 20 years earlier, wanting to study medicine, and this ideal pervading through his years away from the school, trying again – and obsession, which raises the questions of Brian MacMillan and 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, perhaps 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 up with quite an engaging array of former students.