Can't Get You Out of My Head

First thing to say is that I've only watched the first episode so far. I loved his previous two documentaries, Hypernormalisation and Bitter Lake. I find it very difficult to describe Adam Curtis' style, but I'll have a go. It as if he has discovered a massive archive of TV and Movie reels, has spent several years watching them, then has taken numerous clips, stitched them together, and then concocted a theme that connects these seemingly random events together, in order to make a coherent story. He then uses music to great effect, which creates a kind of dissonance. It's brilliantly done. A visual treat. I feel after watching the first episode that my IQ has been improved by a couple of percentiles, but this may be part of the trick. You get the feeling when watching his documentaries that there is something even deeper, that you just can't quite grasp, which makes you want for more. I found myself walking the dog later, and reappraising what I had seen in my mind, and then later again seeking to look up on Wikipedia and Google some of the issues that were only touched on during the film, from such diverse subjects as the Voynich Manuscript, to William Keswick & Lord Kindersely. A must see series.

The good: The individual stories, especially in the first part, are superbly interesting. Many other montage parts are informative, some are mesmerizing to look at and listen to, and the overall feel of the documentary series is almost hypnotic. The issue I have with it though are its generalizations and some of the conclusions and supposed insights, which are sometimes obvious, and sometimes just derived out of flimsy reasoning, derived from somewhat dubious or arbitrary premises.

The individual/collective dichotomy is strained at best, and could be challenged by many alternative arguments in the context of history and sociology. The technology part is interesting, but there is nothing new there. The political commentaries are also standard issue and a bit all over the place. The conspiracies narrative, again, selective and based on certain opinions and aspects, ignoring others, which is the approach in the film overall. That's fine it it is supposed to show only the author's POV, but here it seems to aspire to reveal some deep universal truths, and in that it fails through a faulty - or deliberately tendentious - methodology.

Overall, it's a fascinating series, but I think the author overreached in his ambition to tell a grand narrative that explains everything.

Keeps you interested, comes at you with surprises, creeps up on you, then blows your mind.

This is dense and at times feels all over the place, but it comes together and you'll have moments of sublime horror and comedy on the journey. It's cynical and dark at times but illuminating and powerful at the same time. Great soundtrack too!

This one was a truly surprise. A documentary focused on amazing stories. The difference is that each one of them it's not well known by the public. The arquive images are astonishing and the music it's surreal by songs from bands as This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twist . I strongly recommend.