HyperNormalisation

I don't often write reviews on IMDb. In fact, this is only the second one I can remember doing. So why am I writing one now? Because this documentary is brilliant? No. It's very good, but brilliant would be a stretch.

I am writing it, because this documentary is important.

This film is long, at 2 hours 45 mins. For a documentary, you would think you'd fall asleep long before the end. Trust me, you won't. It is never boring, and at times, it's frankly mesmerising.

In a nutshell the film tells how we have arrived in the post-truth political world, from it's origins in the 1975. It explains the complex interplay between politics, the rise of the internet, the media and social media. Using archive footage and the power of hindsight, it show's how our governments are now just controllers and managers of risk, rather than visionaries, and why you can no longer believe much of anything they tell you.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory right? It isn't. I pride myself on being a rational thinker. I studied science at uni. I'm not religious and I take pleasure in debunking the ridiculous conspiracy theories you see on the internet. This is different. Not because he backs everything up with sources and evidence, but because if you are old enough, you will remember the events, and you will know it makes sense.

I gave this 8/10. Would have been 7, but I think the importance of the subject matter warrants a bonus point. It could have scored a ten, but as I said, I'm a trained scientist, and I value evidence. The film is let down by the absence of enough hard proof. It left me with the feeling that it's absolutely spot on, and that I already knew what it is telling me, but just hadn't admitted it to myself. However, I feel that it will leave many, especially those of the more conservative persuasion, saying "where's the evidence?"

Some more hard facts; documents, interviews with insiders, anything, would have helped to convincingly drive the point home. That said, if you're looking for something that will make you think, you'll certainly get that.

I don't know what Curtis plays for fun in between film productions, but surely he is losing his marbles. And it takes a particular type of person to like what Curtis does.

So Stage 1. New York City. The city is run by incompetents. Erase that. The incompetents are in serious debt. Keep that. The incompetents want to raise the bar and bring in some more debt, when they are unable to pay even the first part. Flash a light over this fact. Nobody wants to make business with the incompetents. Film that. So the incompetents are fired and brought to court to recoup some of the incurred debt. No way, that would be common sense! So the incompetents beg the creditors to forward some more money. The creditors, surprisingly, want to have some of the money back, unlike the taxpayer. So the creditors ask for an overview of the spending. Boom-boom! Conspiracy alert! And can you imagine? For the first time the financial committee has 8 bankers out of 9 people. Who has ever heard of anything like that done by the state? Accountancy should be done by pharmacists and highway construction should be left to the midwives like any good state syndicate would do. Now, if you replace banker with Jew Curtis' discourse is precisely the centuries old Christian propaganda.

Stage 2. Patty Smith. She somehow decides to fit in the tableau instead of "changing the system." What? Right! Like the 16th century theater owners who were fighting the system by brown nosing to the king and aristocrats, like the poets who were writing poems for a bowl of soup, like painters satirizing their patron's religious beliefs. Oh! What days of decadence Mr. Curtis has lived.

And so on, for almost three hours. Nice story. So the voters should give more power to the... power?

Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

With a £30k budget and an amazing flair for story-telling, the director takes us on a journey through post-WW2 history and the circumstances as to why we are in this disillusioned state so many political agendas seem to be supporting.

This is great viewing and really gets you to think hard about the issues that matter: nothing can truly be explained by a 140-character tweet and that's exactly the problem: the world is too interlinked and complex to be understood via superficial analysis nor poetic slogans.

We need to collectively understand the deeper issues at hand, and find the solution that deals at source - building walls, imperial slogans, bigotry and racist knee-jerk responses are not the way

Peace

At the core of this film is a message which I think we can all appreciate; that the world is complex and filled with diversity but at the same time we are encouraged by our media, hobbies, and politicians, to believe it is much more black/white, and not to expose ourselves to views that contrast with our own. This is not new unfortunately – the politics of the right/wrong is everywhere, and the echo chambers of Twitter, CNN, Fox, and many other "people who liked this also liked these" type tools – it is pretty clear where we are. How we got here is more interesting, and there are worse ways to explore it than to allow Adam Curtis to have a run at explaining it.

The way he does it here is as compelling and confusing and frustrating and flawed as one would imagine; it really succeeds in making some of his other work look like the tightest factual presentation ever. In almost three hours we explore the story by touching on Gaddafi, Ayatollah Khomeini, the internet, politics, Donald Trump, 1970's Russian sci-fi; the Arab spring; perception management, drugs, Brexit, UFO conspiracies, Twitter, and so on. Often the links are tenuous, but Curtis structures it really cleverly – we are given chunks of facts in a presentation that makes sense, and as a result we accept the links even as they jump countries and decades.

The downside is that many will be turned off because this is polemic incorrectly presented as a documentary. It is not the latter but as the former it works very well. Although it runs to almost 3 hours, I did not find it boring, but rather found it quite compelling in its message and the manner in which it is presented. The strength of the film to me was not that it convinces in every word, or that I agreed with it wholly but rather that it gave me plenty to think about. It helps that I am old enough to remember many of these events – to have seen the shifting political allegiances, to experience the moments, and to feel like they were not organic in all cases.

HyperNormalization is a niche film – it did not even make it not a BBC channel but rather was put on the streaming service directly. It is not as smart as it wants to, but it is engaging and interesting whether you agree with all of its assertions or not.

Adam again used his deconstructivist style in order to reach the un-result leaving the viewer mesmerized and perplexed by what s/he should hold as truth in this world. The soundtrack of the documentary is similar to his previous documentary "Bitter Lake" with the acid music and also the colors in the movie are really sharp with raw footage that are unedited maybe to reflect the real world he's trying to unravel to the laymen. Again, he blames the finance men for the troubles that are happening around the world and also the politicians who gave up their powers to them by letting them have more than it is supposed to be. However, he has some inaccuracies in terms of some cases especially to what is happening in the Arab world. In other words, he may have even fallen in the perception management that he described in his documentary. In general, his documentary is mind opening to question the reality that is surrounding us.