How does someone become the star of a
documentary film? Since recently joining Netflix I have found myself
far more drawn to the bevy of online streaming documentaries available
than to the fictive films I’ve reviewed for years with DVD releases.
One recent Sunday afternoon, after a long and hard day’s work, I came
home, too tired to write or do anything else, so I watched three short
documentaries in a row, in about four hours. It was an afternoon which
prompted the query that opens this essay because all three films had
lead protagonists that could, at best, charitably, be called idiotic
and annoying.
1
The first of the three films was called The Quantum Activist, and
featured perhaps the most respected scientist to trash his career and
intellectual standing on crapola since Dr. John Mack sipped the
Kool-Aid and came out in support of UFO abductees. The film is a paean
to erstwhile physicist Amit Goswami, who wrote one of the major
textbooks on physics used in colleges throughout the world, until he
decided to give in to his ‘inner demons’- to beg the cliché (why
not since the man, himself, as become a parody- the all knowing Indian
guru who speaks nonsense with a smile- Deepak Copra Redux?), and
ditched science in favor of nebulous New Age propaganda about the
nature of existence and proofs of God. While not going as far off the
deep end to claim that the Christian God is the ‘Intelligent Designer’
of all things, Goswami does claim that it is consciousness, not the
material realm, that is the root of everything, and he tries to build a
straw house on this fragile edifice, and succeeds in demonstrating that
he is either a) as gullible as far less educated people (to his own
snake oil), or b) a wily con man who decided to cash out on the
relatively non-lucrative field of research in favor of the very
lucrative field of New Age guru.
In short, virtually every minute, Goswami utters nonsense that even a
not so educated layman can easily debunk, and by doing so, reveals
himself to be a charlatan, and a thoroughly unlikable one, at that. One
can just tell how insidious his evil is by how facile and ridiculous
his questions are. Literally, if I wanted to waste the time, I could
have paused the film every 60-90 seconds and written a two or three
page answer and rebuttal to almost every statement the man makes yet,
clearly, the filmmakers, Renee Slade and Ri Stewart, are all on board
with this nonsense because not once do they break from filming and call
Goswami out on his nonsense.
2
The second film is clearly the best of the tercet, Collapse, although
not a great documentary, and was directed by Chris Smith, heretofore
best known for the comic documentary from 1999, American Movie, which
documented a talentless wannabe horror filmmaker’s inane quest to do
his film. Compared to another recent documentary I watched, Not Your
Typical Bigfoot Movie, that earlier film comes off as crass and
condescending, showing no empathy for its simpletons, even if,
admittedly, it has its share of laughs. That said, Collapse (unrelated
to Jared Diamond’s excellent book of the same name, which deals with an
obliquely similar subject matter) comes off as a lesser version of
Errol Morris’s excellent The Fog Of War, and its protagonist, an
embittered ex-cop from Los Angeles comes off as a
déclassé Robert S. McNamara, the former Secretary of
Defense from the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. That ex-cop is
Michael Ruppert, a nerd who seems to relish sitting in a chair, trying
to look cool, in the middle of a deserted room, with lights and cameras
on him, smoking a cigaret and trying to look as studly as possible sans
his eyeglasses, while spouting off on subjects that he has little
direct knowledge of: i.e.- a Left Winger’s fantasy of a ‘mole’ that
knows everything and feeds their every wish list of conspiracy
theories; mostly about energy issues and the coming Malthusian end of
the world. This coming human apocalypse to be brought on by the
impending scarcity of oil, all the while ignoring many alternatives,
and denigrating many others. To Ruppert, anyone who disagrees with him
is not just wrong, but a servant of evil. The poor fool seems to be a
character from the cult 1990s television show, The X Files, brought to
life.
The problem is that his knowledge of how the world works, on a material
level, is about as deep and genuine as that of Goswami’s on the
immaterial plane, since Ruppert’s claims are all based upon the
readings of other’s reporting and selectively editing out anything that
does not support his viewpoint. In a classic case of bait and switch,
Ruppert will present semi-truths and sometimes whole truths, but
slightly altered or decontextualized, so to present things in a worst
case scenario, thus letting him have his moments of emotion and
epiphany to try and glean empathy with the viewer, a thing that the
directors of The Quantum Activist, Renee Slade and Ri Stewart, are not
slick enough to get, for they never allow empathy to build for their
leading man, Goswami. In their film, one either has to accept Goswami’s
insanity- lock, stock and pickle container (how’s that for the
unexpected?)- or not. Smith is far more inventive and challenging in
his presentation. Be it Ruppert or Smith who held the final form of the
film in his hand, it’s a good move, dramatically, even as, to a
clear-eyed observer, and one not committed to a political stance as a
critic, that Ruppert is, if not mad, certainly dealing with some deep
personal psychological issues that cannot be denied (he seems
unmarried, not a parent, a loner, with some hints of homosexuality,
clear psychological tics, an inability to control his emotions, and on
and on). What really interests me, though, is how people like Ruppert
and Goswami, so obviously decodable as being not there and a charlatan,
respectively, do anything that actually gets a filmmaker interested in
filming their often inane and rambling monologues. By contrast, I could
go on for hours, with many objective examples, of good and bad writing
or good and bad art, but I doubt anyone would want to just film that.
Maybe they would need to document my childhood and interesting life
story, but just to hear me lecture? I doubt it.
Yet, Smith’s focus on Ruppert is even more intense than that The
Quantum Activist focuses on Goswami. In another recent documentary I
watched, called Rock Prophecies, the filmmaker wisely decided to leave
out information on his subject, rock photographer Robert M. Knight’s
involvement in UFO lore, and conspiracy theories on Area 51, in favor
of his personal angst over his mother’s slow death by Alzheimer’s
Disease, and his need to be able to finance her care. So, instead of
allowing viewers to marginalize a man for one wacky part of his
personality, the film allows the viewer to see a deeper and broader
perspective of the man. Ruppert and Goswami, however, seem to have long
ago left reality, and both exist in shadow realities they have
constructed on their own.
3
The third person at the center of a documentary film, at least, has no
such questions to ask, such as, ‘Why am I filming this person?’ because
she is her own subject. In The Edge Of Dreaming, director Amy Hardie,
of Scotland, makes a whole film about some rather innocuous dreams she
has- thre of them wherein she feels death is at its core. First she has
a dream of her horse telling her he will die and fall to the left side.
The next morning, indeed, Hardie finds her horse dead. The second dream
is from her dead lover, and father of her oldest child, her son, who
tells her that she will dies sometime in her 48th year, which is
upcoming. The ex-lover apologizes, but this sends Hardie into a frenzy
for a year, after her birthday, thinking she is doomed, and propelling
her to interview scientists, doctors, family, and friends, as to what
life is all about. A third dream makes her seek out a shaman, who says
nothing of consequence, but this allows Hardie to try her best to
imitate the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to no
avail. The fact that in her 48th year she develops a disease in her
lungs naturally makes her believe her end is nigh. Obviously, it was
not, as she survives, and all the faux trauma and melodrama, all the
consulting with gurus about as wise as Goswami or Ruppert, allows her
to end her film with one of the oldest clichés going: to live
each day of her life as if she will live forever; a far cry from the
great ending to a great documentary film, like John Grabowska’s Crown
Of The Continent.
To state that Hardie’s film is solipsistic and shallow, annoying and
derivative, vapid and superficial, is to state the obvious. In reality,
the word dull sums things up nicely, and the same can be said for The
Quantum Activist. Only Smith’s foray into the faronzaled mind of the
wacky Ruppert, who at film’s end we are told is reduced to almost
living on the street, in poverty, has any real artistic merit. But, how
does such a mind interest a person of any depth? Perhaps as a case
study in insanity? If one is to believe the PR for Collapse, then Smith
shot over 14 hours worth of Ruppert’s ramblings. I can imagine an even
longer period of shooting involving Goswami, since footage of his
commentary and footage from a few lectures, are interspersed.
Naturally, Hardie’s own narcissism likely fueled even more footage than
the other two film’s combined. But for what end? Goswami is clearly a
fraud, Ruppert is clearly going psychotic, if not already there, and
Hardie is simply a none too interesting woman who is trying to invest
that dull existence with her own pretensions to insight.
Of course, Hardie’s pretensions are matched or succeeded by Goswami’s
and Ruppert’s, but only Ruppert’s film rises to become interesting
entertainment, for its creator- Chris Smith, unlike Hardie or Renee
Slade and Ri Stewart, actually succeeds in the aims he states
(irrelevant to a critic’s getting it, but, in retrospect, a device that
other filmmakers should understand): ‘What I hoped to reveal was...that
his obsession with the collapse of industrial civilization has led to
the collapse of his life. In the end, it is a character study about his
obsession.’ Unfortunately, although it is the only one of the three
films to achieve any measure of success, it’s a wan one, for Ruppert is
simply not that interesting, even as a case study in psychological
suicide. Goswami’s film is worse because, unlike Collapse, it never
dares to even hold his feet to the proverbial coals. It gullibly
accepts all manner of nonsense the man spews, while Hardie’s film is
probably the worst of the three, for the other two protagonists are at
least flamboyant. She’s a dull housewife and mother.
4
As I turned off that third and final film of the afternoon, The Edge Of
Dreaming, I was a bit depressed, not so much for the content and
presentation of these films, as even bad ideas can sometimes help one
focus on higher things, but because there had been time and money
wasted on these individuals when so many other far more relevant and
interesting people and subjects exist, could use the publicity, but
it’s only being squandered on such pathetic and pointless people and
pursuits. While it’s has a certain import, culturally, to document the
detritus and trivia of a society, these things should only be
undertaken after the quality and important people, ideas, and events
get their due, not before, because I have the sinking feeling that
somewhere, out in the mists, are artists, scientist, thinkers, and
leaders who not only can answer all the things Goswami, Ruppert, and
Hardie address, but do so quite easily; enough to obviate their very
queries. So why not focus on those people, and leave the Goswamis for
the Revivalist tent show set, Ruppert for the Men In Black enthusiasts,
and Hardie for post-menopausal life adjustment crowd. The rest of us
certainly don’t need them, but we just may need those people the
cameras are not currently on. Hopefully, some other filmmakers will
‘see the light’ and give us new stars. Shine on, my brethren. Shine on.
