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bryrsmith
Reviews
Hunting Atlantis (2021)
Does this team watch any other documentaries?
"Wow! That's amazing!" Well, yes, it was also amazing on a documentary three years earlier. Are they actually "discovering" anything? I don't think so. While Drain the Oceans uses amazing technology to map whole swaths of the sea floor, Jess and Stel struggle with murky water to find things that have already been found, to "uncover" secrets that haven't been secrets for years. That said, it's entertaining enough to watch them play tour guides and to find for themselves things that have already been found. One thing that really bugs me about all these sort of "hunting" this or that "mystery," ie, hunting the mummy of John Wilkes Booth is the reliance on phrases like, "could this be the actual mummy?" when both they and the viewer know good and well it isn't. Or, "if this turns out to be what we think it is, it *may be* the (fill in the blank.) Again, my inner dialogue: "but it won't and it isn't." Pretty scenery, though.
Finding Michael (2023)
Tone deaf, contrived, indulgent-a portrait of privilege not heroism
Two small moments in this documentary crystallized what this documentary may not have been "about," but that it certainly revealed. But first, a word about "tragedy" and "tragic," which was thrown around quite often. Death is not "tragic." It happens to all of us. That Michael died on Everest isn't tragic either. Sad, yes. But as many have pointed out, he knew the risk. As for his brother, seems like instead of forking over a fortune and risking the lives of sherpas to go look for a body on the basis of one snapshot that was immediately discounted to "work through" his grief, maybe try some therapy? What people who go on searches like this often find out is that even if they are successful, they don't find the magical closure they sought.
Okay, so the two moments. The first, is when we discover Michael's watch was a Rolex. Second was the smash cut from the friend feeling like death in a tent shaken by howling, frigid winds to Spencer in a sweater and his rugged beard sitting alone in a comfy bubble apartment, staring wistfully out. He may as well have been tinkling a scotch by a warm fire in his mansion back home.
And I agree with others: the "while we're up here" vibe of finding the sherpa's body felt so contrived and phony, as if to convince us what a magnanimous guy Spencer is or, a cynical idea from the filmmakers in dire need of an ending.
The entire thing came off not as "heroic," but indulgent.