Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis is undoubtedly something to be cherished. Or, rather, his films are.
The Power of Nightmares is possibly the best documentary series I’ve ever seen. It’s all about how the American neo-conservatives and radical islamic terrorists need each other to exist, in order to have a symbolic enemy to rally the troops against, though the documentary delves far deeper into the origins of the dichotomy.
Power of Nightmares has, I think, the most cohesive narrative of any of the films of his I’ve seen, though his others are good too. They feature a very distinctive style – warped (in the original, literal sense of the word) obscure archive footage, often seemingly way off the point, is cut together with other random clips to form a very impressionistic picture of what sort of thing the documentary is about, and makes the films interesting to watch without resorting to wham bam computer effects, and in fact fare better when it comes to abstractly establishing an mood and purpose than a lot of video art I’ve seen. These little segments have voice-overs, so are not completely off topic, and are mixed with more traditional documentary footage… interviews and the like, so it ticks the informative side of documentary making too.
He’s made at least two mini documentaries for Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe/Newswipe, and watching one of them this afternoon made me realise how utterly formulaic his documentaries’ main point is. Summed up:
There was a way things were, then something big happened, then there was a backlash against the way things were, led by people whose ideas formed in the sixties, who presented a grand vision of how things should be. Then something else big happened, and there’s another backlash we’re living through at the moment.
And it strikes me that, though his documentaries rail so often against the ideologues who push unachievable schemes for making the world better and mastering our destiny and wotnot, he too is victim to having a grand narrative of his own. Stylish though his films are, he risks edging over into just-another-liberal territory.
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Tags: adam curtis, archive footage, documentaries, liberal, power of nightmares, style