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SYNERGY

If you are going to see one Errol Morris film, this is probably the one you should see.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)

And the film is a NYTimes Critics' Pick.

Three disparate topics come together and are intercut with one another. The result is a remarkable synchronicity.

A topiarist, a circus lion tamer, a terminologist and the head of the MIT artificial intelligence lab.

Overlaps of visuals and sound are used to provide a symphony of thoughts and visualizations. Like a symphony in that watching and listening results in a cascade of one's own brain waves. I think that each time I have seen it (four times?) it has given me something else as a result.

Skillful. Never boring. Always stimulating.

At the surface, these people share a one in a million kind of situation. They are probably the only people doing what they do. They are expert and they are also childlike in their amusement and curiosity. There is far more here even more than meets the eye.

Sound is very important. The cry of an elephant punctuates the talk about robots. Subtle but very connected. We are prompted to think about all of the subjects at once.

Each person also has another side. The circus lion trainer idolizes and remembers Clyde Beatty. The topiarist talks about the estate on which he has spent his life carving animals and other shapes out of bushes. And so on.

There is no doubt that I will see this again. It is like a tonic! A 5 out of Netflix5!

Labels: films