The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity

“An unexpected masterpiece” (Grady Hendrix, New York Sun), Brian Springer’s The Disappointment is a labyrinthine, semi-autobiographical documentary about the search for four disparate treasures buried on his family’s farm in Missouri. These include gold coins left behind by a 16th-century Spanish explorer, silver from the Civil War, the legendary lost diary of anarchist Kate Austin, who lived on the farm in the 1890s, and a mysterious limestone sculpture of dubious origin. Springer interweaves the stories surrounding these treasures with those of his family to spin a tale of spirit possession, Napalm, Indian massacres, early American opera, fanatical obsessions, 200 tons of dirt, and the way mothers try to protect their families from wounds that never heal. Brian Springer’s bizarre film is a documentary treasure map of imagined and marginal histories carved into the landscape of midwestern North America.