Review of Can't Get You Out of My Head

As an admirer of Adam Curtis and much of his work, so much so that I dug up his rarest films from the '80s onwards, this is probably the lowest ebb in his CV. His '80s and early work showed huge promise and were captivating. His best, his great masterworks, were probably from about 'The Century of the Self' to 'The Trap'. 'The Power of Nightmares' was full of excellencies but was weak on geopolitics. His best work treads a narrow bandwidth, following a concise tight yarn with original interviews, tight and intoxicating cutting, superb use of music by the likes of Herrman, Morricone and many others of the same ilk. The result is usually very cinematic and with tight storytelling anecdotes nugget-ted into the bigger tapestry. The best of his work has a narrow focus, 'The Mayfair Set', 'The Century of the Self' and 'The Trap'. Unfortunately, in his latest work, as with his previous two, 'Bitterlake' and 'Hypernormalisation', that tight narrow investigative field woven by others and well illustrated by Curtis has been replaced by a diffusive, haphazard style and manner. Gone are original interviews from his days as a documentary film-maker seeking a truth, to be replaced by grand proclamations that set off a new strands of discursive thinking. And I'm thinking, "Wait a minute, mate!". It's ok if you've only been exposed to BBC media indoctrination but for anyone that reads books, listens to podcasts, knows anything at all about history, psychology or geopolitics - he rings hollow, false and self-contradictory. For instance, in one segment he stresses how the EU has been designed to take away the power of the politicians and leave the people voiceless, yet the following segment is about how Brexit was a response for those hankering for a mythical golden age when the people lived in villages and were taken care of by the landowners. It's a completely disingenuous argument, that he can see the flaws of the system set up by a technocratic elite, yet ordinary people might not feel the loss of choice in their lives and vote against a system imposed upon them by a managerial class of rulers. It is a high-minded, narcissistic, metropolitan elitist view of the commoner. At other times, he dismisses conspiracy theories and seems to believe in the Magic Bullet of Delay Plaza. Many times, he starts a story that seems set to pay-off but just fizzles. Unlike his previous two films, which were hyper kinetic, this one almost has a langour that seems lazy, the music is curiously off too. And the voice-over seems to have an aged feel. Perhaps, the biggest flaw is that it actually seems to be a parody of the Curtis style, a Charlie Brooker snippet stretched and stretched by a filmmaker in the throes of ADD and dementia. There are moments of inspiration, short segments in episode 3 when he addresses Globalism, or episode 6 when he looks at the technological structures being built up around societies where he gathers some of his old charge and his use of 'Song for Zula' is inspired and hypnotic.