By Pete Weiss
This article appeared in a slightly different form on Pete's blog.

You’d probably guess that any movie called Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father must be a blandly pseudo-inspirational Hallmark special.

What if I told you that it is one of the best-regarded documentaries of this past year (94% on rottentomatoes!)?

Like any good thriller (which, like Erroll Morris' seminal documentary The Thin Blue Line, Zachary is--at least on the surface) the specifics of the story are what really matter here, and there are several I wouldn't dream of giving away. If you want this movie to affect you the way it did me, or if you're just in the mood to be put through the emotional wringer, stop reading now and come back to my review later. Now, if you need further convincing...

Filmmaker Kirk Kuenne had a friend named Dr. Andrew Bagby. Andrew was, by all accounts, a great guy; a kind of mellow Jack Black with a stethoscope. While in med school in Newfoundland (the only one that accepted him), he became involved with a fellow student, Stephanie, an older woman with a scarily fake-friendly persona. Settled in small town America and happy with his life, Andrew attempts to break up with Stephanie, who pulls out every trick in the emotional terrorist’s handbook before Andrew bluntly breaks up with her. 24 hours later, he's found dead. Stephanie is questioned and charged, then released when her psychiatrist(!) posts her $75,000(!) bail.

And this is when shit gets real. Remember the title, and all the father-son stuff? Stephanie, about a month after probably murdering Andrew, announces that she is pregnant with Andrew's baby. Andrew's parents, two of the nicest, most grounded people you can imagine, then go about the process of trying to wrestle their dead son's child from the hands of the person who murdered him. Their luck? Not so great.

I've never recommended a movie by effectively saying "Yeah, it's really good, and it's also a scathing indictment of the Canadian legal system", but I guess there's a first time for everything. There's much more meat in the story that I won't even begin to go into, including an event about two-thirds through that will shake you to your foundations.

Also, the phrase "not a dry eye in the house" is too often applied to the wrong kinds of movies, movies that expect you to turn off your brain and be manipulated into being sad about the death of the Haley Joel Osment (I'm still waiting for director Mimi Leder to pay me back for Pay it Forward), but Zachary is a terrifically crafted movie that lets the amazing real-life events dictate the movie's style.

This brings me to what is perhaps the movie's one flaw, and I'm not even sure I can call it that. The movie occasionally lays it on a bit thick, with music cues and editing that are a bit on the melodramatic side. But, fuck it. Life is melodramatic sometimes. Mr. Kuenne had to live through these events, and for that alone he gets to wang it up as much as he wants.

If you know me well, you've heard me bring up "This fucking devastating Jonestown movie that made me weep buckets." It’s great, it’s called Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple, and it's available on DVD and sometimes shown on PBS. The thing with that movie that really floored me was how it made me revert to an almost childlike state. Watching this movie feels like I am little and watching someone kill a puppy in front of my eyes; I'm helpless to stop it, so all I can do is cry and scream: "NO!"

With Zachary, enough positive things are happening onscreen--amazing, awe-inspiring, heroic things--that you don't go home feeling like you've stared evil in the face and lost.

And trust me, I checked: there was not one dry eye in the house.

Zachary is now out on DVD. Consider buying it, not only because you'll want to show it to everyone you know, but because the DVD jacket features some beautiful artwork and because the proceeds go entirely to a specific kind of family's rights group that this movie couldn't be a better advertisement for.

Dear Zachary: A Letter To a Son About His Father.

SEE IT.