Schnell, billig und außer Kontrolle

My small survey of documentary types has brought me to this, and what a celebration!

This is complex, meaningful cinema that just happens to be a documentary. It is intelligent, complex, deliberate and deeply thought provoking. I think it communicates something that isn't quite right, but the thing is communicated in the most effective way — by folding the idea being explained into the form of the explanation, the film itself.

The core of this is the work of Rodney Brooks. He is a celebrated researcher in robotics and now the founder of the most promising company making these things. He is smart, articulate and the things he makes work as advertised. I've encountered him and his work professionally over the last 30 years. He makes machines that walk, and have some cognitive navigation skills. Walking is hard.

While there are many research centers working on robotics, there are only two universities working on the underlying theories. MIT is the least shallow of these. Add in the fact that Brooks has manufactured thousands of graduates in his style of thinking, and you may appreciate why he may be one of the most influential thinkers on the planet.

The theory here is that instead of thinking about a single brain, it makes sense to think in terms of a society of collaborating miniminds, agents. As a metaphor, bees, ants, termites are usual. And as usual, the metaphor in most quarters is taken too literally. Brooks does not quite do so, but this is the first compromise made by the filmmaker. Making agents systems that have the behavior you want is impossible without some structure in the society. A promising approach is to go deep and restructure logic. Instead, Brooks structures the agents into "subsumptive" layers. This mirrors special purpose roles of termites and molerats in colonies.

Okay, here is an idea, an interesting one, and one that is already embedded in the general intellectual economy. Around this, Morris builds a film. Nominally, there are four "geniuses." One is our robotics theorist. We have an obsessive expert in molerats, so we have our metaphor made whole. We have a lion tamer. Now he fits into the idea architecture by explaining how he repeatedly risks his life to figure out and superficially control inscrutable animals. And finally we have a guy who reverses the metaphor; he takes living things with their natural agent system that wants to behave one way, and he forces it to look like larger living things. The resemblance is superficial and fragile.

Two of these form the cinematic spine: the circus and the robots. Most of what we see apart from the four individuals themselves is a collage of circus footage and splices from old robot movies. We also have the synthesis of old "circus" movies with robotic influence.

Peppered in are the two other guys and their cinematic expression. With the molerats, we have — well film of molerats. With the topiarist, we have some artistically photographed scenes of him working in the garden. The score is important in Morris films; here the composer tries to build subsumptive music, taking themes from movies and other recognizable sources, assigning them to types of clips we see, and subsuming them into a klezmer- inspired circus score where we are the audience.

This really is a carefully structured piece of cinema, visually conveying ideas much deeper than one normally allows.

The problem is that like the four men we are shown, the approach is still discrete, reductionist. It assumes that great sweeps of life can be logical, explained. We go to the circus and topiary garden to see this narrative. An influential professor treats grad students like so many ants, incrementally evolving "the system." A fellow "explains" the colony, as if observations equals insights.

So here is the quandary with film and ideas. Film is about showing. The best ideas are about abstracting away distracting (and often false) appearances. A long form narrative film takes you places where you can invent your insights, with some guidance. A documentary feeds insights, but has to stick more with the "sight" than the "in."

Still, the structure here and the ambition! It isn't real, but it does not have to be to warm us.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I was amazed at how Errol Morris abstractly tied together four people with such contrasting occupations. I was skeptical before seeing the film--after all, how on earth would anyone relate a lion tamer, topiary gardener, mole rat specialist and robot expert--but Morris pulls it off excellently. The ties between certain details of each interview either tie visually or conceptually with one of the other interviewees, and the beauty is in the way the ideas are strung together. The quirky soundtrack is fantastic, giving a twist to circus music that carries the mood of the film, as well as help Morris to make serious comments about life. At any rate, this is a very enjoyable documentary, even to those who strongly dislike documentaries.

Four men are interviewed separately. One man studies hairless mole rats. One man is a topiary gardener. One man is a retired lion tamer. One is a robotics designer. Each has a passion (or an obsession) with their chosen subject but have seemingly little in common. With the collection of their interviews, Errol Morris explores the themes of growth, development and evolution of species.

My plot summary suggests that I "got" what Morris was trying to do but really this is my guess. If that was his intension though then he has fallen short of it because rather than coming together to form a documentary, the film feels like it is all over the place with no real direction or control over the subject matter. Each of the men are reasonably interesting by themselves and the topics are unusual enough to hold the interest. However the way Morris uses them is poor and the film is cluttered with archive movie footage and a terrible musical score. I'm not totally sure how he was trying to get to where he wanted to be, maybe at one point he just decided to revel in the "weirdness" of his subjects and give up on pulling it all together.

The men are mostly interesting even if their subjects aren't particularly. The gardener was probably the only one that I actively found pretty dull, the others had a bit of character and passion that endeared them to me. Maybe if Morris had tried to do more with the men themselves he could have done something interesting, but by going for the bigger theme he loses his way and ultimately his film shows it consistently throughout.

Overall then a disappointing film from start to finish. Die-hard fans of Morris might find enough of his style and interest to carry them through but for me I found it to be a real mess of a documentary that doesn't seem to have any design or structure about and left me wondering what I was watching and why I was bothering.

In science, there is a property of any complex system, that more complexity and subtlety will result with each added component. This, in my opinion, was the subject of "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control." The parallels drawn between AI, societal mammals, commonality of life (the lion tamer) and art (topiary gardener) flesh out a world where the idea of "God" can well be reduced to a simple inherent property of existence. Mole rat societies are not so far from human societies; humans are not so different from animals; robots are not so different from animals; and each individual represents a unique degree of specialization that proves important to the greater society it exists in. I found this work elegant, subtle, and even-handed, not to mention completely unique in its structure and faith in the audience to decipher an individual meaning from the context provided. Each person interviewed is wholly engrossed in their craft, something for which no other human can be substituted, and that exuberance shines in their eyes. It's a strange ride that inspires wonder in trusting viewers, exactly the way that the experts' wonder has motivated their realization as truly unique humans.

Encapsulated reviews are misleading. I had several times bypassed "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" on IFC for more lively sounding fare on movie channels. When I finally selected it as the least boring of an afternoon's TV movie offerings, I regretted not having picked it sooner and seen it more often.

This documentary delighted me! Interviews were enhanced by display of the works of four brilliant practitioners, fanatical about the unusual focus of their work or study. We are introduced to naked mole rats, robots as the next stage in evolution, wild animal training and a visionary handicrafter/topiary designer. Each professional provided unusual insights to their efforts and perhaps to our own natures as human beings.

The documentary seemed designed to hold even those with the even shortest of attention spans. Rather than engaging each subject in depth as a single segment, the interviews are presented in approximately one minute scenarios, often with a montage of old film footage relating connections and historical ideas about some of the subject matter. Just as a viewer's mind might start to drift during a segment, it collides with the next subject, often forcing mental connections that may not have come naturally.

After watching this one, I felt compelled to find and view the other productions of Errol Morris, and I shall keep an eye out for his future works. I believe that its audience should comprise anyone with a spark of interest in the world around them and the desire to be entertained. Whether you are fond of documentaries or not, I think this one will offer a pleasant and quickly passing ninety minutes.

Gene Romero gromero001@aol.com