Buracos Negros: No Limite do Conhecimento

Greetings again from the darkness. When most of us need an item, we first check the Amazon website for price and availability. For Physicists and Astronomers, it's not always so easy. We are informed that photographing a Black Hole would require a telescope the size of planet Earth. Even with my limited science knowledge, I was able to understand the impossibility of fulfilling such a request. Of course, there is a reason they are Physicists and yours truly reviews movies. These folks are pretty darn smart and they find a way to solve problems. Harvard University Physics Professor and documentarian Peter Galison manages to make accessible the work of some of the world's brightest minds.

Thinking back to 2019, you likely recall seeing the Black Hole photograph. It was everywhere ... online sites, social media, TV newscasts, and magazine covers. We knew it was a breakthrough, but most of us had no idea what went on behind the scenes to capture that image. Galison's documentary fills us in. Going back to 2017, and starting in Mexico, the film explains the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). With the goal of photographing a Black Hole, a network of observatories from around the globe will be coordinated to simultaneously capture data, and then that data will be compiled to determine if the image(s) is an accurate representation.

There are a couple of things we follow ... related by topic but differing in objectives. A group including Stephen Hawking, Harvard Theoretical Physicist Andrew Strominger, British scientist Malcolm Perry, and Cambridge scholar Sasha Haco are observed hard at work on solving the mysteries of Black Holes. Specifically what they are pursuing is the Information Paradox, which states the universe cannot be defined by physical laws. This pursuit of this group of geniuses is shown in symmetry with the work of the EHT teams, where mostly we follow Shep Doeleman and the challenges his team faces in holding up their end of photographing Messier 87, a supergiant elliptical galaxy.

The EHT teams are located around the globe, including Chile, Spain, the South Pole, Hawaii, and Arizona. Obviously the technical aspects of these projects are beyond my capacity, however, it should be noted that the film is easy enough to follow for us non-geniuses while also including some geeky detail for the advanced among us. What really stands out and makes the film fun to watch is the passion shown by these scientists. At the conference where the teams are gathered, these folks are giddy as they anticipate the results of their work and the compilation of data. Their excitement makes it clear what an enormous accomplishment the image is for all involved.

Sadly, Stephen Hawking passed away in 2018, so the clips we see are some of the last images of his final work. If you are curious as to how his work with Strominger, Perry, and Haco ended up, you may track down their final paper, "Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair" ... but I'm sure most of you have already read it. To add a touch of entertainment value, director Galison includes beautiful music from YoYo Ma as well as "Over the Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Overall, this is the perfect blend for novices and scientists who are interested in the fascinating topic of Black Holes and how the experts go about chipping away at the mystique and limits of knowledge. Available VOD on March 2, 2021

This has shades of the BBC's "Horizon" programs - science, but hidden behind stupid graphics and dumbed down visuals that have almost nothing to do with the topic. At least this program didn't do the Horizon trick of using stupid camera angles and getting the interviewees to look through objects, mirrors or lenses or do stupid things.

Look, science is not boring and the audience is not dumb.

I'll give one example of the Horizon mentality that infected this program. When showing Sagittarius A* and the stars orbiting it, rather than showing a nice, accurate diagram like you can find on Wikipedia, we instead get some artist's crazy rendition that bares little resemblance to the real situation. Please! No more of this kind of garbage.

I also found there were long periods of padding that were totally unnecessary. Do we need to see artist's drawings of stick figures marching along the screen? Do we need lengthy sections of dialogue between scientists that is taken totally out of context and is pretty meaningless to any non-scientist?

Then there is the lack of a narrator. If you are going to dispense with one then at least get your interviewees to explain. On the one hand the producers wanted to dumb down things with stupid graphics and yet, on the other, they leave it to the audience to work things out for themselves. For example, the teams of people producing independent results from the same data. It almost presents the story as if the scientists are just making up stuff and the resulting image of the black hole was their collective fantasy effort.

Overall it was interesting, but the story could have been told in half the time and made much more interesting.

Six stars for the science content - you'd have got more if you'd corrected the above problems I've pointed out.

I don't know about other reviewers, but for me the theoretical physicists seemed like a bunch of groupies, fawning over Hawkins and belittling their own work. Meanwhile, the lead project astronomer comes off looking a lot like a bully with some of his comments to his colleagues. Yeah, it's high-stakes, I get it, but the guy just didn't seem like he had leadership quality.

Is this a true depiction of science? Maybe it is. I have no idea.

But what's clear to me is that this documentary really dumbs it down, to the point that you have ask the question: why bother doing this kind of documentary if you're going to assume that your audience are idiots? Despite all this, I still give it a 7 overall just because there's a dearth of good documentaries about black holes.

Too bad this one wasn't a bit better.

If you're as fascinated by the universe as I am, you'll like it, just because.. Well, it's about seeing a black hole for the first time. But it's a poorly produced film that's actually almost impressively boring in its form. The story here is mind blowing - too bad the movie producers couldn't encapsulate that in a better way.

I would imagine anyone who watches this does so as they too are intrigued by what are one of the greatest discoveries in the universe, Black Holes, and how they play a central role in the formation of galaxies... and more.

The documentary is a build up to the climatic moment when the theory for the existence of Black Holes, based on how they influence their surrounding environment, changes to the discovery of finally seeing a Black Hole! It's an incredible moment.

I enjoyed it.