wavecat13

I've been watching Adam Curtis documentaries with great interest for a while now. They are magnificent creations, and Curtis's way with documentary footage is second to none. His interpretations of historical and political situations are another story. He presents his ideas in a calm, ironic sounding voice-over, or sometimes oddly enough in subtitles, while strange and often violent occurrences take place on the screen. Contrasting viewpoints are never included; Adam Curtis's outlook is the only one on display.

In this 2015 film, Curtis takes on the involvement of other nations in Afghanistan over the years. At times it is like a conventional historical documentary. He looks at the first Western forays into the nation, followed by the USSR's adventures there in the 1980s, and then on to America's and Britain's efforts to supposedly help build a modern democracy. Well, now we know how that turned out. Curtis sometimes seems at a loss for words and ideas in this. He is not promoting some attention-grabbing theory, like he has done in other films, and sometimes he just goes quiet. He does talk about how Western leaders try to present things in simple good vs. Evil terms, whereas the problems in Afghanistan were actually very complicated.

Here is an old favorite of mine. Some scenes have been cut from the original version (in particular one of the schoolgirls' romantic relationship with one of the teachers, which is presented as nothing terrible or unacceptable) for the sake of political correctness, but they never say that anywhere in the credits. I actually called the production company to complain about this, and the girl who answers the phone just openly lied and said that nothing was missing. Anyway, this film belongs in the early 1980s time capsule. And it was also the debut of some very big talents, like Sean Penn (who seems to have single-handedly created the stock character of the stoner surfer) and Robert Romanus.

It must be difficult to do a documentary about a man who was deliberately opaque, who wanted to be known only for his work, or as his work, and tried to reveal as little about himself as possible - even to the point of hiding his car's license plate! Some info about him does come thru here - not surprisingly he was a perfectionist workaholic whose one real love in life was Apple Computer, a project that was very personal and emotional for him. He had a thing for Japanese culture and Zen Buddhism, and their aesthetics influenced his designs. We see him on stage performing at Apple events (something he did well), and it becomes clear that his genius was for marketing and design. It was his lesser known teammates that did the nitty gritty programming and financial work. It is safe to say he was a genius - but was he a good man? He could be dishonest, he could be mean, he could be selfish (as revealed in his treatment of his first partner and his first child), and philanthropy didn't interest him. When he died, his multi-billion dollar fortune went into several anonymous trusts. Ultimately I felt like the world did not really get to know Jobs - and I guess that is how he wanted it.

I am a HUGE Alex Gibney fan btw - keep them coming, Alex - you're the best!