From the point of view of a long-standing Errol Morris fan, I cannot for the life of me see what is so unique about this series. I only saw the first 2 hours, but those were 2 excruciating hours. After that, I couldn't take it anymore.
The entire time I waited for some kind of revelation to happen, or maybe a little of the magic of the first few Documentaries by Mr. Morris, but there seems to be hardly any left after all these years. My hero is now a one-trick pony, reiterating his greatest hits, using the techniques he used well over 3 decades ago, and repeating them again and again.
Don't get me wrong, I really wanted to like this series but I can only say that, if Errol was interested in making a project that would have some impact, he might have considered getting himself an Editor who would challenge his meandering, repetitive, tedious method of storytelling. Errol, my best suggestion is to find someone to cut your movies who is not a sycophant.
The basic storyline is drawn from the many many hours of interviews with a man who's father was a pawn of the CIA and who plunged to his death from what was considered a 'suicide' after taking LSD (against his will) as part of a super-secret experiment. Now, I like conspiracies much more than the average moviegoer, so ol'Errol is preaching to the choir when he gets his audience mired in one conspiracy after another.
But the drawback is that we have to watch every single solitary possibility acted out in long, drawn-out, talky sequences, all of which serve no other purpose than to justify the "series" part of the equation. (All I can surmise is that the Netflix execs must have wanted an exclusive series that they could promote the hell out of -- since the documentary does not justify any more than a 90 minute treatment.) Amid all of this is the myth that LSD supposedly would cause a normally stable man to commit suicide. Of course, that assumption is false, but for some ridiculous reason, the family believes it.
Had Errol done his usual routine, get the facts, get the talking heads, overlay the headlines, and tied it all up at the end of 90 minutes, this would have been a work of genius along with his many other achievements. However, someone let the kid into the candy store and allowed him to gorge himself on as much padded mishmosh of re-enactments as he could possibly stomach. The result is a very bloated, very over-acted, very slow, very verbose series.
The entire time I waited for some kind of revelation to happen, or maybe a little of the magic of the first few Documentaries by Mr. Morris, but there seems to be hardly any left after all these years. My hero is now a one-trick pony, reiterating his greatest hits, using the techniques he used well over 3 decades ago, and repeating them again and again.
Don't get me wrong, I really wanted to like this series but I can only say that, if Errol was interested in making a project that would have some impact, he might have considered getting himself an Editor who would challenge his meandering, repetitive, tedious method of storytelling. Errol, my best suggestion is to find someone to cut your movies who is not a sycophant.
The basic storyline is drawn from the many many hours of interviews with a man who's father was a pawn of the CIA and who plunged to his death from what was considered a 'suicide' after taking LSD (against his will) as part of a super-secret experiment. Now, I like conspiracies much more than the average moviegoer, so ol'Errol is preaching to the choir when he gets his audience mired in one conspiracy after another.
But the drawback is that we have to watch every single solitary possibility acted out in long, drawn-out, talky sequences, all of which serve no other purpose than to justify the "series" part of the equation. (All I can surmise is that the Netflix execs must have wanted an exclusive series that they could promote the hell out of -- since the documentary does not justify any more than a 90 minute treatment.) Amid all of this is the myth that LSD supposedly would cause a normally stable man to commit suicide. Of course, that assumption is false, but for some ridiculous reason, the family believes it.
Had Errol done his usual routine, get the facts, get the talking heads, overlay the headlines, and tied it all up at the end of 90 minutes, this would have been a work of genius along with his many other achievements. However, someone let the kid into the candy store and allowed him to gorge himself on as much padded mishmosh of re-enactments as he could possibly stomach. The result is a very bloated, very over-acted, very slow, very verbose series.