The Definition of Insanity co-writer/director and actor Robert Margolis (Photos: Robert Margolis)

Maybe it is just me--something about my life today, or my taste for genuine catastrophe--but some of the most appealing films I have seen in 2005 function on a level straddling the ghost line between fact and fiction. Films like Murderball and The Talent Given Us triumph because neither film allows viewers the chance to remind themselves that they are only watching a movie; they must bear with real "characters" whose lives are channeled--however authentically--into a structured 90-minute narrative. For a filmmaker to steal this comfort is to risk exploitation (Tarnation) or gratuitous melodrama (Reel Paradise) or both for the sake of something ostensibly "real." When it works, however, you cannot get the goddamned movie out of your head.

Not that this is some new phenomenon or anything, but Robert Margolis and Frank Matter's festival hit The Definition of Insanity (which screens tonight at 7 at the Pioneer Theater) tweaks it in a way that actually uses exploitation and melodrama to its advantage. But, you know, in a good way.

No, seriously.

"As an actor," Margolis told me recently, "I was kind of tired of going to auditions and either not getting cast or doing stuff that I didn't feel really excited about. So for me, (the film) served both functions. It allowed me as an actor to just totally give myself over to something I was committed to. As directors, Frank and I could create something and say, 'We created this, no one else is responsible and it will live or die on that level.' And we also hoped it would resonate with people."

Margolis and Matter's sink-or-swim ethos is etched into the film's main character, a struggling 38-year-old actor named--hey!--Robert Margolis. Matter's camera trails Robert as part of a documentary about an actor's life: bouncing around New York from one hyperbolic audition to another; sustaining hope in the face of almost laughable adversity; and, in Robert's case, managing a home life including his patient wife Sally (Kelli Barnett) and his toddler son. He also takes time to commiserate with colleagues such as the aging Frank (Frank Krias) and the upstart Derek (Derek Johnson), each of whom represent sort of a multi-generational symbol of Robert's past and future.

Derek's lucky TV break eventually triggers a nascent fatalism in Robert, which Margolis and Matter play up to emphasize an added degree of narrative pressure. The result yields a discomfiting vacuum for the viewer, because if Robert's resilience and optimism are to be admired, their values are constantly undercut by opposites like desperation and irresponsibility. He spends rent money on new headshots, quits a semi-promising job as a private investigator to audition for a Peter Bogdanovich film (the director appears here in a sublimely self-effacing cameo, as does Anthology Film Archives guru Jonas Mekas) and endures dueling passions for work and family that jeopardize his potential to support either.

Technically, Margolis and Matter should be made to answer for placing a wife and child in between a man and his dream, but it is not really that simple: Although Sally is anything but unsupportive, her eyes defer to a resignation that Robert may well be lost forever to something over which he has no control. As such, even as you find yourself sympathizing with Robert, you find yourself begging him to face reality.

Of course, the way the filmmakers have shaped the story--interweaving a few fabricated characters among many true-life personalities, a la Andrew Wagner's The Talent Given Us--it is virtually impossible to tell what Robert's reality is. "We didn't want to spoon-feed people," Margolis said. "We wanted to present an experience to people and have them bring their own experience to it as an audience. The interesting thing about this film is that some people watch it and they think it's really funny and that's what they come away with. But we don't like to describe it as a comedy, because there are some people who come out of it like that--who are devastated by it. They really think it's incredibly tragic.

"From a marketing point of view, it might be kind of tricky, but we like it in terms of what it does for an audience. And people have very different reactions to the film."

Stand by your man: Kelli Barnett deals with Margolis. Again.

And though Margolis and Matter do not attack Insanity with Wagner's fearlessness or the unflinching eye of a neo-doc like Murderball, they do remarkable justice to the risks, rigors and consequences of pursuing one's dreams. Its eschews an ambiguous ending in favor of one that asks viewers to take a position on Robert's future or perhaps even judge him; you know too much about him and his inclinations to remain neutral--after all, he kind of is you.

Festivals have taken kindly to the film since its release last year, with Insanity capturing Best Picture prizes and audience awards from Newport Beach to Minneapolis to Switzerland. Margolis won Best Actor awards at both this year's Brooklyn International Film Festival and Chicago Independent Film Festival, and Margolis and Matter shared Best Director laurels at the latter event. Distributor interest has spiked since last month's Variety review praising the film as a "brilliant, audacious indie," and Margolis told The Reeler that he and Matter are gunning for an extended New York City release sooner than later.

"It seems to be the case that when we go to these screenings, that it has a much wider resonance," Margolis said. "Anybody who's ever been driven by something--by a dream, by an obsession, by a passion of some kind that they've either followed through or given up on--somehow relates to the film."