Steve Kurtz is an artist and educator who lost his wife (heart failure) and freedom (the FBI launches a terrorism case against him) on the same day. Strange Culture, the hybrid documentary by Lynn Hershman Leeson, retells Kurtz maddening experience in equally maddening fashion. At once a dramatic reenactment piece and alternately a straightforward news-style documentary, the film creates a formalistic rubric wherein the lines between life, art and journalism become indecipherably blurred. As Kurtz and his wife Hope, Thomas Jay Ryan and Tilda Swinton open the film as the couple arguing cautiously over breakfast. Twenty minutes later, the real-life Kurtz appears speaking as himself (and proceeds to narrate and reappear at random throughout). Ten minutes thereafter, Ms. Swinton and Mr. Ryan are glimpsed between takes, speaking as themselves and of themselves portraying and grappling with the Kurtz’s lives.

Lost in the muddle of so much formalism is the heartstring drama of Kurtz’s ordeal. By presenting the story in such intellectual fashion, Ms. Leeson (willfully, or inadvertently, it’s unclear) makes Strange Culture a purely intellectual endeavor. As such, it cultivates a language all its own, sacrificing the purity of experiencing Kurtz’ anguish in straight-ahead fashion for an analogous blend of the real life story’s pain and the heady anguish of embellishing it through dramatization. The film doesn’t always strike the balance necessary to pull it off but it strides more than it falters. Given the merits of Kurtz’ story and the difficulty of bringing any tale to the screen, there’s victory in that.