Watch The Rachel Divide For Free

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It's becoming rare that a documentary actually presents an even handed account of its subject, and trying to do that with Rachel Dolezal is perhaps about as impossible as can be simply due to the number of levels her story touches on.Most everyone, I assume, knows her as the woman who was born white, but called herself black and was the president of the Spokane NAACP. But why did she do that? If Rachel can be trusted, and really that is a big if, it's that her parents adopted some black children but she took it upon herself to teach them black culture. Along the way she found herself identifying more and more with what she saw as "black culture."What I think this documentary does a particularly good job at is saying that there is no one thing that is set apart as "black culture", just as there really is no one thing that sets any other culture apart exclusively. What Rachel did was take elements of what she saw black culture as, maybe the ones that she liked the most, and claimed them as hers. For whatever reason though she didn't see that as being dishonest, even with the people she was trying so desperately to identify with telling her that it was.One part of this documentary that really stuck out to me though was one of her critics saying that she is using her sons as her struggle. Rachel is a mother, and seemingly one who wants her children to do well, but she has come across as taking their difficulties on as her own. To me that reveals that ultimately she see it's really all about her. She either seems oblivious or indifferent to what her sons are going through because she refuses, or is incapable, of being honest with herself and with the world. She has made life more difficult for them and she doesn't really seem to care.And yet, it's hard not to feel something for Rachel despite all that. Where I draw the line though is it doesn't justify anything she has done.

The concept interested me because I had heard much indirect explanation of this woman's claims of blackness but had never spent any time researching the real story. This documentary tells the real story, which I had heard in its entirety through all the second-hand reports: a white woman spent a large portion of her life pretending to be black, to the point of convincing herself that a choice to be so would make her actually so, and through her pretense actually rose to a position of social importance among civil rights groups. She does much complaining on camera about how much of a joke everyone treats her as, but even those who love her (friends and family) repeatedly iterate in veiled terms that it's all just an awkward ruse no one is benefiting from. I was especially interested in the story because of a (former) friend of mine from college who had pulled the same stunt, dressing like, acting like, and even going so far as claiming black heritage. The documentary showed me the same socially confused and insecure fraud as I had already seen in my one time friend. I can accept embracing a culture that isn't your own because its lifestyle and symbology appeal to your needs and tastes, and I personally find the entire concept of "cultural appropriation" to be an absurd hoax grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding of how culture works, but the idea of "bi-riacial" identity not only works as a laughably poor excuse for this woman's obvious black-faced life, but it belies the reality of why racism is scientifically, and more importantly morally, false.

Good documentary. If the subject matter is of interest, you wont be disappointed. But I don't get all the criticism. The biggest hypocrites seem to be the outraged liberals. who chant transsexual good...transracial bad.

I had a hard time getting through this documentary. Usually I can find ways to find something likable about a main character but try as I might, I couldn't come up with any likability for this woman.She seems very cold and detached. I felt bad she had such a horrible childhood, which is why she identifies with being black, although I'm still unsure about that. I am not black, but if I were, I would resent her lies. She cannot know how a black person experiences discrimination or have a sense of an ancestry. As far as black being a social construct, I have never heard of anything so stupid. Just my opinion. I think she needs therapy to try to heal herself, instead of passing herself off as something she is not.