One of the things I like about Curtis's documentaries is the way he reveals the recklessness and incompetence of power, but with the thrilling style of a conspiracy theory. As far as actual conspiracies make an appearance in his narratives, it is to show that they fail or have unforeseen consequences. Nobody is running the show, though many have tried to, and the world's complexity exceeds everyone's grasp.
lolAll very interesting but really nothing that wasn't said in Augustine's City Of God.
Same here, besides the Surkov bit, it was probably my favorite part of the whole movie.I particularly appreciated the way he told the story of Gaddafi. I knew most of it, but the sheer absurdity had never really hit me before.
(Even if you didn't know that Saudia Arabia existed, this movie about state-sponsored islamic terrorism would still be entirely intelligible!) What's lacking is an admission that he's only looking at certain pieces of the puzzle, and through a certain lens. — csalisbury
So the question then, if we choose to forgive him the cherrypicking, the tenuous links and the exaggeration, is: does the story add up? Is it a good description of the last forty years to say that as finance took power and the world became impossibly complex, politicians and media gave up on their visions and missions and created a fake world, which, though we are sceptical and cynical about it, we accept as the new normal? It has a lot going for it, I think. On the other hand, if his choice of facts doesn't amount to evidence in support of this thesis, the film hasn't done its job except as a kind of propaganda or polemic.
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