Johann_Cat

Despite what many summaries or reviews of this documentary claim, this is not in any way a direct cinematic restaging, or simple endorsement of, Tom O'Neill's theories about the Manson murders. O'Neill, who first came to the Manson murders as a journalist on assignment around 1999, was provoked by several under-explained events in Manson's biography to conjecture that Manson was influenced by, or made an agent of, yes, the grandaddy of conspiracy theories in US History, MK Ultra. O'Neill studies this interval: Manson was allowed to violate parole in 1967 in Southern California and move to San Francisco (effectively transferring his probation from one city to another), where he became, with young women alongside, a frequent customer of the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. From this history, because there was some evidence that government researchers in the effects of drugs on young people were occasionally (it's not clear how often or in what capacity) in the clinic, O'Neill sought connections between Manson and US government officials overseeing mind control experiments involving LSD-- and all of O'Neill's claims involve over-amplified conjecture in key places.

I was at first ambivalent about this film's use of hyperbolic music and the scrambling of images (esp. Of textual evidence) into chopped and hard-to-parse cubist collages (if one pauses the video, the documents, e.g., letters from probation officers in 1967, can be read). While I first thought this was a cheap way to get suspense and bluster into the film, the method rates as true to the level of doubt and fantasy this history still compels, especially as told by O'Neill.

In Morris's film, the affable and bright O'Neill is on camera and has plain opportunities to lay out concisely exactly what the salient, empirical evidence is for Manson being an operative, or a close or distant student of, or a vicariously influenced lunatic in any way related to MK Ultra and all O'Neill can come up with is essentially "I'm just sayin'-- I can't identify direct lines of conspiracy between the United States government and Manson but, wow would it be interesting if there were huh?" So while Morris does not debate O'Neill (direct, antagonistic debate is rarely Morris' style), this is in no endorsement of O'Neill's theories or methods.

The better part of this, as an exploration of "what the hell inspired these crimes?" is in Morris' (phone) interview with Manson fellow traveler, Bobby Beausoliel, then an LA musician, convicted of murdering Gary Hinman, an event which occurred about two weeks prior to the notorious Tate/ Labianca murders. Beausoliel says, look, I was part of this crew: let's strip it down to its "bare bones." After the murder of Hinman, (which he claims was drug-deal-and-debt-related), Manson wanted to make sure that his crew would not rat him out for the Hinman murder and thus made them complicit in even larger crimes. But the motives for the bizarre Hinman murder itself (he was a close friend of Beausoliel's), and its relationship to the later massacres, is still fuzzy. Beausoliel's status as an un-reliable narrator (parts of his his accounts of the Hinman murder sound like Jon Lovitz on a 1989 SNL) justifies some of the frustrating-but-realistic "we aren't going to fully answer many questions here" quality of Morris' movie. The theory about race wars in Vincent Bugliosi's account of Manson was (Beausoliel says) just a kind of rhetorical sauce that Manson added to motivate the culprits and to make the crime scenes confusing, but here too O'Neill's categorically disbelieving the Bugliosi explanation (Bugliosi argued in "Helter Skelter" that the "this will start a race war" theory was actually primary in the motives, not just added hokum from a gang leader) and also claiming that Bugliosi's theory is mendacious and designed to sell books, ends up sounding like a projection of O'Neill's interest, and repressed doubts about, marketing a lurid hypothesis *onto Bugliosi*--and this projection actually seems to be one of the core sources of drama in Morris' film. I don't indict either O'Neill or Bugliosi for trying-and-failing at times to support what they think are compelling theories, but O'Neill's dismissal of Bugliosi as a con-man seems silly when all O'Neill has in retort is literally a conspiracy theory with missing keystones.

I was fascinated by this when I saw the first season; so far, that's the only one streaming in the US, so I tracked down a German DVD set of the whole run, recently (2025). The best things this has going for it are its acting, technical and cinematic qualities--they are better than a lot of current movies, and the technical artistry of Das Boot-rebooted is excellent across the wide variety of subplots, though there is some staginess in the USA/ NYC portions of this. All to say: the technical excellence of the series is not just confined to the submarine-scenes--and the makers of this obviously did a lot of work on making the sub scenes look good and realistically high-drama. The major actors are all excellent.

The plots (all of them: sub, France, USA) are laced with a number of elements that are not quite historical, but I find they work symbolically and provoke thoughtful questions about the coming post-war world order, and the world we now inhabit, with resurgent debates about fascism and the fragility of republics. One especially megalomaniacal, narcissistic sub-commander (Stefan Konarske, playing Wrangel, in a performance fit for a Shakespearean villain with absurd elements--utterly brilliant, weird performance) seems uncomfortably familiar in 2025. I take the series not as a realistic war movie but as something analogous to a good graphic novel spiced with some fantasy elements and symbolic anachronisms. In the "how does it hold up?" category, I'd say very well: I am often watching other things and thinking, "this is OK, but its not as good as reboot of Das Boot, e.g."). The French drama of season two, involving the ways French opportunists were turned into minions, agents, and even violent promoters of the Nazi regime, is even more compelling than season one's quite moving tale of a resistance fighter. Another surprise is that Season 3 is the best visually so far, thanks to cinematographer Armin Franzen, and excellent set designs both on land and at sea. I find many shots in Season 3 worth pausing over for their compositional savvy.

The basic fantasy here is that in Texas, it is permanently the 1970s, in energy policy and in culture. Having spent time in Texas, I attest that some of this is true. However, the reactionary elements of this are delivered with far too much sincerity and sneering crassness--and too little irony--for this to be bearable.

This basic myth inspires a vision that is like a cross between a giant pick-up ad, a big-hair night-time soap from 1978, and a soft-porn cheerleader drive-in film from the same era. Others have commented on the silly, retrograde, sexist depictions of women in this, but I'll focus briefly on how the men are depicted. They have an insecure pretense of expertise and bully anybody not in their inner circle. The BBT character essentially has no inner circle, so he is omni-directionally nasty. Real men are nasty. However, their jobs, involving large machines, are so confounding that these experts are compelled to force mechanical issues the way a frustrated 12-year-old might use a hammer on a bicycle; in short, they use the wrong tools, and create disasters. Real men regularly make fatal mistakes because they use their brawn rather than their brains. If you don't understand something, force it: the results are part of the cost of being a real man. Trying to secure a gas valve related to some other workers' disaster, the BBT character shows *he doesn't know how to use a hammer* without destroying his opposite hand. Absurd and unbelievable depiction of the industry and of Texas men, who are predominantly self-destructive blow-hards--yet these guys are delivered as unironically macho. Maybe this becomes a clever metaphor for what the petrochemical industry is doing to the planet, but I have lost patience with it.