HyperNormalisation

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

This is a very long film so I recommend breaking it up into two or more chunks and leaving some time for digestion in between. It has lots of interesting ideas and I guarantee even the best-read will learn something and have a couple of "Hmmmm" moments, if not an "Aha!" one.

Curtis has a way of imposing a narrative upon your active perception using images, music and sounds in ways you would expect from, ahem, a film maker. He even casts himself as a journalist, rather than a storyteller. As a result, you are always aware that you are being manipulated, just like the manufactured reality discussed/presented in the film. You are the audience of the audience.

Proceeding in this spirit, though many people have found Hypernormalisation depressing and frightening, it should not take you anywhere you haven't been before (if you are over 50 anyway). Barbarism in the pursuit of power is not peculiar to the 20th and 21st centuries, it is just a lot bigger and it's online. Hypernormalisation is not for the squeamish, but when you become aware that you have developed a level of immunity to these myriad images of horror, you get to understand what normalisation means. Neither is it for the faint hearted; the target audience may be those who are already deeply cynical.

But Curtis is a clever film maker, let him entertain you.

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.

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.

Chillingly accurate.

My Curtis is probably the most accurate - devastating documentarist I've ever seen.

I think Mr Curtis' ouvre is a visual record on part with the witness of Malcolm Gladwell, and though they're interests differ,, these 2 are supporters of the tent poles which hold us up - personally and as a race.

Watching, I find it difficult to not watch, but, for every brake in his narrative, I'm almost fearful to continue watching.

I've always said there's nothing more chilling than realty.

If you're sometime who wants to begin to understand, 'wtf is going on with this works and how had it happened?' here it is.

I don't want to say to much, aside from this is truly the real 'Shock of the New (to borrow, from my favourite art historian essayist, and general bad boy, Robert Hughes).