Dear Zachary: A Letter to His Son About His Father

Kurt Kuenne’s heartbreaking new documentary, “Dear Zachary: A Letter to His Son About His Father,” features a story that, if fictionalized for, say, the purpose of a novel, likely would be labeled “outrageous” by an editor, stamped with a swift mark of rejection, and sent packing to the mailroom.

And it would be tough to blame the editor for doing so.

What occurs in this movie only could happen in real life--the frail walls of fiction couldn’t sustain it. The events that unfold are too bizarre. The way the story escalates is too steep. And when the floor does give way, the drop is too far to fathom.

This is the story of one man’s murder, and the fierce ripple of events that rang out in the wake of the five bullets that claimed his life. You sit watching the movie in a kind of haze, thinking that what happens here couldn’t possibly happen the way it happened, and yet it did happen. It’s staggering to believe it happened.

Unable to contain his rage, writer-director Kuenne doesn’t even try to conceal it. For a less-skilled director, this might have been a problem--the movie could have lost focus. The rage might have overwhelmed the facts.

But not so here. Kuenne’s fury at the injustice done to his best friend Andrew Bagby, a doctor who was set up and gunned down in Latrobe, Penn., by his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner, doesn’t detract or make for a lesser movie. In fact, it allows for one of the year’s most powerful movies, with Kuenne achieving a keen, almost rabid focus as he zeros in on each of the many wrongs done to Bagby and his steadfast parents, David and Kathleen.

If too much is revealed here, the movie’s impact will be ruined, so I’ll be cagey with the particulars, which some readers likely already know given that the movie’s events are chronicled in David Bagby’s best-selling book, “Dance With the Devil.” For others, it’s safe to say this: After murdering Andrew, the Canadian-born Turner fled to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where a battle for her extradition was fought in court over the course of several months.

Since it’s revealed in the film’s title, one complication can be noted--turns out that Turner was pregnant with Andrew’s child, whom she gave birth to and named Zachary. Upon learning of this pregnancy, David and Kathleen, who once considered suicide in the wake of Andrew’s death, left the U.S. and moved to Newfoundland.

There, they launched into one maddening fight for their son’s son. Since Turner was free on bail and had custody of Zachary, that meant they had to form a civil relationship with their son’s murderer in order to see Zachary and make sure he was safe from this obviously troubled woman. They did this day in and day out, while the Canadian court system routinely shamed itself in ways best left for the screen.

Surrounding all this isn’t just the ache of loss felt by Andrew’s parents, which is so palpable, it burns, but also of his many friends and family, who are interviewed in ways that not only show us who Andrew was as a man, but also in ways that move the story forward. And where that goes, I’m not going.

“Dear Zachary” is currently being promoted for Academy Award consideration, where it will be taken seriously. For those seeking a profound, unshakable movie, it’s worth a call to your local cinema to ask that they show it.

Grade: A