Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause

A documentarist, like any filmmaker, must convey a compelling story. Will Pascoe fails utterly in this effort, cobbling together uninspired snippets of Chomsky's wisdom from a visit to McMaster University in Hamilton. The footage is shot amateurishly and in video. Pascoe's only effort at cohering the fragments into a whole is by periodically throwing a vague title on the screen: "9-11," "Activism," "Truth."

Lame.

Compare this with documentaries like "The Corporation" or "The Fog of War" which create a narrative drawing material from interviews, stock footage, and filmed footage. In the end each delivers a poignant and insightful message deftly and intelligently.

The only saving graces of the film are Chomsky's nonchalantly delivered upendings of historical dogma, and the fact that the running time is only 74 minutes.

One of the more interesting passages was Chomsky's recounting of his experience with National Public Radio. He describes the conservative media as more accommodating to dissenting views, while NPR's liberal dogma strait-jackets its interviewees and dramatically limits its permitted messages. Yet another media outlet to be skeptical of.

This documentary is for Noam Chomsky completists only.

In America, we rarely see Chomsky on TV. In this age of "uber-patriotism" and statements from our leader saying, "you are either with us or against us" it's refreshing to hear a major American intellectual actually discuss the state of the union in regards to a larger world. "Rebel Without A Pause" deals with September 11th, American's place in the world, the war on terror, media control and manipulation and activist movements in the world today. I have also seen the other recent Chomsky documentary "Power and Terror" which is nothing> more than two dated Chomsky lectures book ending a lengthy and poorly-run interview with Chomsky. (who looked like he didn't even want to be there.)

In "Rebel Without A Pause" we see Chomsky in action on several important fronts. We hear him talking about many issues but most importantly we see him talking about Iraq, which makes this Chomsky documentary very timely. (the "Power and Terror" documentary was done a year and a half-ago and seems dated by comparison). "Rebel Without A Pause" seems to have been done very recently. In "Rebel...", we see Chomsky engaged with students and academics in lectures and small discussions - and he actually discusses (and argues) the finer points with others in this interesting documentary. What was a real treat, however, was the commentary and reflections of others that are scattered throughout the film (activists, intellectuals, and critics all discuss Chomsky and his views). You can see why the old guy is so popular with college kids today who seem to surround him throughout the film. For all its excellent points, the real gem in "Rebel Without A Pause" is wife and manager Carol Chomsky who charms the audience with every word. She tells us what it's like to live with a famous intellectual (she seems to think he talks too much and talks too often!) and gives us unparalleled insight into what makes the 75-year old intellectual tick and what motivates him to spend most of his time on the road talking about the state of America and the world when many of his contemporaries and critics have packed it in.

This is an important film and if you can see it you should. There are lessons and points about how our government works and acts globally, that we never see on CNN. To hear an alternate point-of-view is a rare thing these days. Chomsky also tells a story in the film about why he's rarely on US television (he's seen as a threat). I saw this film on a recent trip to Canada and given the recent war in Iraq, I doubt we will see "Rebel Without A Pause" on PBS or any other American media outlet for the very reasons Chomsky himself explains within the film. Chomsky's story almost seemed like a joke -- an interesting way to use a media outlet like this film to criticize other media outlets for stifling alternative thought and discourse). While I thought the war in Iraq was justified, Chomsky's comments on American foreign policy did make me wonder about ulterior motives in my government and with Iran becoming a bigger issue, it seems the old intellectual is not only smart, he's also prophetic.

There are some poor production values in this documentary, but I'm a Chomsky devotee, so it didn't bother me that much.

Chomsky is dazzling as usual, a man of effortless eloquence. Almost everything he says is interesting, well-researched and well-considered.

Chomsky is very persuasive because he so often bases his arguments on government documents and news reports that are already in the public domain. He analyzes them and displays the blatant fallacies behind them. This is one of the principal reasons why he's deemed a 'dangerous' thinker who isn't welcome in the U.S. mainstream media. He USED to be welcome at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), but that once-great public broadcaster has been looted and neutered over the past 15 years or so.

An annoying feature of the DVD extras was that questions from the audience were barely audible, and in some cases INaudible. What it creates are rather silly scenes: Chomsky staring at the camera for 30 seconds or so, listening to a question DVD viewers cannot hear. Then he responds, and we must wait for another 30 seconds before we can understand what question he is responding to.

Still, it doesn't really matter that much. Chomsky can distill 20 years of reading and analysis into five minutes. His mind is brilliantly ordered, and his memory is prodigious.

Chomsky comes across not as a pedant or a shrill master of dogma, but as a quiet voice of radical reason. He reminds me of everyone's favourite grandfather: a kindly, gentle, soft-spoken man who rarely needs to raise his voice. He just tells you what he knows, what he has learned, and you can use this as ammunition for rebellion against the state, or, conversely, you can do nothing. (This has been one of the criticisms levelled against Chomsky by the so-called 'hard' left: that he doesn't vigorously exhort, he merely explains and quietly tells you to resist. In other words, he's not 'explosive' enough.)

He is still a very impressive and persuasive voice of reason. But he's now 80 years old (born in 1928). How much longer can he keep doing this stuff?

This was an eye-opener for me. I just read Noam Chomsky's book about September 11th (called "9-11") and I was really interested in learning more. I saw this film on TV and I was amazed at the man's ability to recall facts and figures from articles, interviews, etc. He really is one of the smartest speakers in the world today. His wife, Carol actually steals the show as she explains what it's like to live with such a mind. Interesting tidbits from Carol was that Noam reads 6 newspapers a day and over 80 journals every year. The fact that he's really into his grandchildren and to meeting with students and talking about the issues made me see him more as a grandfather than a radical intellectual. The reflections and insights from others in the film are equally revealing. It becomes clear that Chomsky has influenced successive generations of people and still exerts enormous influence in the world today. There is so much interesting bits from Chomsky on so many issues I am hoping to either see it on TV again or in the theatres or on video so I can pay more attention to what he's talking about. Try and get it at your local video store that specializes in non-Hollywood blockbuster films and prepare to be challenged by Chomsky and his ideas.

Although this film is no masterpiece, Chomsky discusses topics everyone should be thinking about. Filmed just prior to the start of the Iraq war, he describes the mechanism of fear as a means of controlling the masses.

His words are eerily prophetic; "When the fear runs out of Iraq, then it'll be Iran who becomes the imminent threat."

Wow.

Chomsky understands the ways of the world, Republican-style; create fear, disseminate fear, use fear for corporate growth, make fear the ultimate tool of ultimate ignorance. If it were made today, the content could be waved-off as trite, but these are words from 2003!

Chomsky predicts results of events of actions of those days before the Iraq war, and we see those predictions become uncanny reality before our eyes ...sadly, because it reveals the ultimate truth: Americans are cattle.