Formerly "A Movie A Day" :/

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control - 1997 - Dir. Morris

I remember watching a part of this film, long before I had any knowledge of who Errol Morris was, in a film class. I don't believe I even watched the entire film and I don't remember being particularly enthused out the whole deal. Six or seven years later, Errol Morris is probably one of my favorite directors. Vernon, FL is easily one of my favorite films. I suppose I remembered Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control being a very difficult film to pierce. Although, looking back, Vernon is way harder. Fast and Cheap is pretty straight-forward as I saw today. And it's addressing a lot of topics that I have personal boners for. Robots, difference between robots and animals, difference between animals and man, it investigates all the lines we draw between ourselves and the other and leads us to possibly re-think some of those lines. Interviews between four men with very different jobs are edited together in a manic sense, pulling literal or thematic parallels between them. While editing in clips of old movies and circus performers, Morris pulls together a rather stirring montage of what could be four dudes talking about their jobs. He elevates it to talk about something a little deeper, something a little more difficult to come to a conclusion with. I feel like the film makes it harder to judge its subjects. It seems to just want us to get excited and think about what these men are proposing... and as they intersect, the film seems to want us to think about what it could mean if their theories are correct. The film is also never mean-spirited to Ray Mendez's bowtie... which is the most important thing of all.

NAKED MOLE RAT!? NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

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