All Light, Everywhere

For such a fascinating topic, this "documentary" manages to create 110 minutes of the most uninspired, dull, and pretentious content imaginable.

Except for the fascinating excerpts of parts of the history of photography, it tries so hard to be profound, to weave broad narratives, to write an erudite documentary essay, that it just comes across as pompous and dull.

There is almost no intelligent commentary or narrative here, or insights. A total and utter waste of time!

All Light, Everywhere starts out as a documentary that is simultaneously about police equipment and the faultiness of human perception, ending on an obscenely important point. It is a movie about movies - as in, the very invention of motion photography - and the fallible senses involved in our consumption and creation of images. What does this musing on bias and objectivity have to do with modern law enforcement technology? You'll understand it when you get to the later scenes.

The movie came to us from Theo Anthony, acclaimed for his work on the 2017 documentary Rat Film. His latest project may be his most ambitious (regardless of what he'll be making next), particularly in the scope of what it tackles.

As a documentarian, Anthony proves himself worthy of Werner Herzog, especially in how he leaves in what was filmed outside of that moment of time in-between "Okay, we're rolling" and "Alright, we got it, thank you". Consider the interview in Herzog's masterpiece Grizzly Man, where he lets the camera roll for a bit after the subject abandons her photography-friendly composure and becomes more human, and compare it to some of the scenes of Anthony directing his excited interviewees. There is certainly a thematic reason for it here - one interviewee directly comments on how professional he's being now that he's aware of the camera that's about to shoot him; the lens that knows his every move.

All Light, Everywhere inspires one to question much of what we know, or claim to. The clever editing, eerie use of ancient stock footage (literally as old as "footage" itself), and gloomy score certainly add to the mood. As mentioned, Anthony's choices are thematically relevant, and his technical knack is obvious with every move.

There is also an intriguing history lesson, as the narrator goes over the earliest examples of human beings trying to "capture" linear time (Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky once argued that cinema is the one art form that allows this feat of wonder, hence why he would so rarely cut his scenes). We learn of so-called chronophotography (the immediate precursor to film) and the invention of the Janssen revolver - a device that, effectively, "filmed" a model of Venus and the Sun circa 20 years before The Roundhay Garden Scene and L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat.

The documentary makes the case that this sequence of images might be the first movie ever made, as it predates those other two titles. But if a bona fide movie camera isn't a requirement, we might also argue that it goes all the way back to zoetropes and phenakistiscopes.

A little later down the line, the Janssen revolver inspired the chronographic rifle (yes, a lot of the pioneering movie-camera work apparently involved Victorian weaponry, which may be why we call it "shooting"). Its inventor Étienne-Jules Marey, who was more concerned with motions here on Earth than those of the distant stars, is described to have thought of this instrument as "an entirely new sensory organ, capable of revealing the invisible patterns of the world".

He wrote of their "astonishing precision", unmatched by the ocular tools of man, and sure enough, we do often think of machines - including cameras, which ostensibly observe reality without the taint of human bias and emotion - as boundlessly more objective than our stupid meat brains. However, as other parts of the documentary explain, sometimes there is more to an event than meets the lens. (I wrote in my review of Dr. Strangelove that "the idea of machines that control mankind might never be as frightening as mankind controlling machines".)

Indeed, no matter how sophisticated these technologies become, there will always be some level of distortion. The moments we observe through film must always be processed by a fallible invention before they're transferred through fallible channels to our fallible senses (already affected - made pliable - by pre-existing biases and emotions). All Light, Everywhere is one of the most thought-provoking documentaries I have seen in a long time, and though I plan to see it again, who's ever to say I've seen everything?

This waste of time disguising as a documentary is really a 90 minutes infomercial for the company that makes Tasers & Body-Cams, peppered with 20 more minutes of random facts about the history of Photography. The movie has no point of view, is incoherent at best and tries way too hard to appear smart.

It does not leave the viewer with any discovery other than realizing how rich the owner of the Taser/Bodycam company must be (with 89% of the market) and how amazing it is that he got this free publicity from this blatant informercial disguised as a pseudo-documentary. No bad consequences, side-effects or negative effects on humanity or on society are even presented.

The only time I thought this movie was FINALLY going to get somewhere was late in the film when a few members of a community (in Baltimore i believe) are voicing their concerns about possibly being spied on by an airplane surveillance camera taking pictures of their neighborhood 24-7. But then, next scene, the City of Baltimore Police do chose to go ahead (A pilot test they say) with this intrusive surveillance system anyway, so who cares what the concerns of community folks.

From the very beginning, All Light, Everywhere lets you know that it will demand your undivided attention for its entire run time. It's informative, philosophical, and aesthetically pleasing. The story is about cameras, scientific measurement, human sense, and their limitations to discern reality. The story is primarily told through the lens of the modern surveillance state and its application in law enforcement. All Light, Everywhere is unlike a traditional documentary. Approach it as a Sundance award-winning film.

Using big words, quotes, and philosophical takes does not even remotely mean you understand it. It's like it's 2 attempted movies, smushed together; 1 is a walking tour of Axon with actual footage - ok, it's fine, and the second one is a grad school project for liberal arts trying to sound way smarter than it is. Fails miserably on both parts. This film shot for the moon and tripped on its shoe laces while getting dressed instead. Put some actual time and research into a tactile subject. People will like it more than this attempted philosophical jargon that comes off as a movie made by someone who read the title of a book about the subject. Skip this.