HyperNormalisation

This is a documentary that people need to watch. It's informative in a way I have never seen on TV before and will help people of all political divides to make their minds up as to weather their political beliefs are accurate.

From other reviews you will gather that it is about politics, money, power, The West, the Middle East, and how politicians are trying to re-establish some form of control by lying to you.

My review is to encourage you to watch this because of the future of the internet. INFORMATION IS POWER.

Today questions are being put forward in parliament about how to control the internet - this documentary will both inform you about how important this is and possibly scare you about who might be setting the controls.

This is a very long film so I recommend breaking it up into two or more chunks and leaving some time for digestion in between. It has lots of interesting ideas and I guarantee even the best-read will learn something and have a couple of "Hmmmm" moments, if not an "Aha!" one.

Curtis has a way of imposing a narrative upon your active perception using images, music and sounds in ways you would expect from, ahem, a film maker. He even casts himself as a journalist, rather than a storyteller. As a result, you are always aware that you are being manipulated, just like the manufactured reality discussed/presented in the film. You are the audience of the audience.

Proceeding in this spirit, though many people have found Hypernormalisation depressing and frightening, it should not take you anywhere you haven't been before (if you are over 50 anyway). Barbarism in the pursuit of power is not peculiar to the 20th and 21st centuries, it is just a lot bigger and it's online. Hypernormalisation is not for the squeamish, but when you become aware that you have developed a level of immunity to these myriad images of horror, you get to understand what normalisation means. Neither is it for the faint hearted; the target audience may be those who are already deeply cynical.

But Curtis is a clever film maker, let him entertain you.

I don't often write reviews on IMDb. In fact, this is only the second one I can remember doing. So why am I writing one now? Because this documentary is brilliant? No. It's very good, but brilliant would be a stretch.

I am writing it, because this documentary is important.

This film is long, at 2 hours 45 mins. For a documentary, you would think you'd fall asleep long before the end. Trust me, you won't. It is never boring, and at times, it's frankly mesmerising.

In a nutshell the film tells how we have arrived in the post-truth political world, from it's origins in the 1975. It explains the complex interplay between politics, the rise of the internet, the media and social media. Using archive footage and the power of hindsight, it show's how our governments are now just controllers and managers of risk, rather than visionaries, and why you can no longer believe much of anything they tell you.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory right? It isn't. I pride myself on being a rational thinker. I studied science at uni. I'm not religious and I take pleasure in debunking the ridiculous conspiracy theories you see on the internet. This is different. Not because he backs everything up with sources and evidence, but because if you are old enough, you will remember the events, and you will know it makes sense.

I gave this 8/10. Would have been 7, but I think the importance of the subject matter warrants a bonus point. It could have scored a ten, but as I said, I'm a trained scientist, and I value evidence. The film is let down by the absence of enough hard proof. It left me with the feeling that it's absolutely spot on, and that I already knew what it is telling me, but just hadn't admitted it to myself. However, I feel that it will leave many, especially those of the more conservative persuasion, saying "where's the evidence?"

Some more hard facts; documents, interviews with insiders, anything, would have helped to convincingly drive the point home. That said, if you're looking for something that will make you think, you'll certainly get that.

Adam Curtis is a talented film-maker. He has an ability to locate interesting clips, audio, and stories; and to draw previously un-remarked parallels between them. His weakness lies in his tendentiousness; not every parallel is a cause, and his tendency to make numerous, semi-random connections can obscure any final point. His most over-used word is "then" - things do happen, one after the other, but the order of succession is not always noteworthy. I watched a live interview with him a couple of years ago, in which he covered some of the themes in his film 'HyperNormalisation', and his answered ranged from perceptive to exasperating ("the politicians have let us down by not providing us with something to believe in", he said, but seemed to have no idea himself about what that something could be). The way to take his films, I think, is to look for the nuggets, those strange stories you haven't heard of before which just might be worth giving a little more thought to. 'HyperNormalisation' itself is nearly three hours long, and could fairly be described as rambling. But it's great to look at and it does make you think.

A fascinating dive into the current world of politics and the vast significant changes worldwide over the past 30-40 years which have seen a change in systems and beliefs. This documentary provides the facts behind political conflict and gives reason for particular events which have triggered truly shocking outcomes. The run time might be off putting but this is an important watch