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ALL WATCHED OVER MY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE is a documentary purporting to explain the negative impact of computers and computer thinking on our society. But as this is Adam Curtis making it the result is a documentary that ranges from gorillas in the Congo to Ayn Rand rather than taking a straight A-Z. Unfortunately, in common with much of his other work, despite the sheer breadth of material covered and Curtis's undoubted skills in melding image and music, the actual argument is extremely dubious, poorly argued, lacking in evidence and frequently incoherent.
Instead the documentary relies on Curtis's soothing tones (he does the v/o) and constant changes in ideas, music and images, in order to bamboozle the audience. This method of constant change prevents you thinking clearly as your attention is always being called to something else. Once the programme stops and you begin to think about it without the benefit of music, image and voice, you realise just how dodgy the whole argument is.
My other usual problem is that, whenever Mr Curtis touches on a subject with which I am familiar, I usually discover he is wrong or at least generalising to a dangerous degree. Thus the entire section on the decolonisation of the Congo basically blames the Belgians and more generally the West for the near immediate collapse of that unhappy country. There is no hint that the inhabitants of the Congo could even think or act for themselves. Curtis paints a picture of local tribes living in perfect pre-European harmony (conveniently forgetting the original inhabitants of the Congo - the pygmies) that is at odds with reality. There are a large number of similar errors. My worry is that, if Curtis is so often wrong when he talks about things that I know well, then is he also wrong about the things I don't know well?
The sad thing is that every poor Adam Curtis documentary is an opportunity lost. The BBC has frankly given up on even trying to make documentaries on such complex subjects (even BBC4 is more arts than intellect). And nobody else has access to such a great amount of archive or the funds to really sift through it (hence why you always see the same archive on documentaries).
score /10
YohjiArmstrong 7 July 2011
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2454617/ |
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24-2-2021 12:07:18