FAST, CHEAP, AND OUT OF CONTROL
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Errol Morris is one of our most accomplished documentarians. His A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME explores the meaning of life and infinity through the mind of the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking. His THE THIN BLUE LINE investigates a possibly innocent man sentenced to death for murder. And finally, what some consider his best, GATES OF HEAVEN examines people's feelings about a couple of California pet cemeteries.
FAST, CHEAP, AND OUT OF CONTROL takes everything we know about the construction of a documentary and twists it around in fascinating ways. Rather than choose one subject, he picks four seemingly unrelated topics and then interlaces and intertwines them.
All coming loosely under the category of wild animals, the subjects include a circus wild animal trainer (Dave Hoover), a topiary gardener (George Mendonca), a mole-rat specialist (Ray Mendez) and an MIT robot scientist (Rodney Brooks).
The prerequisite for a good documentary filmmaker is a knack for choosing the right subjects to interview, and all four of these look straight out of central casting. Each has his own quirks that make him photogenic. Dave has the rugged good looks of the Marlboro Man, George has beady eyes from his meticulous work, Ray wears a butterfly bow tie with his plaid shirt, and Rodney has wide saucer-like eyes when his imagination goes wild.
In a highly non-linear format, Morris keeps the audio from one section going when he switches to the visual of another. As Ray talks about the colonizing habits of mole-rats, the most insect-like mammal, the camera moves on to the circus performers and people in the stands. Using such techniques he forms a bond between the disparate material.
Another secret of the film's success is the use of an Academy Award winning cinematographer, Robert Richardson (JFK). Most known for his collaboration with Oliver Stone, Richardson's work was one of the best parts of Stone's most recent film U-TURN.
"Its all done from memory," George says telling us his topiary secrets. "You know what an animal looks like, and you start making an animal." He has been working on the same garden almost forever. The spinster who owned the house and grounds died over twenty years ago, but he keeps on tending her large and magnificent gardens. Perhaps because George has the only stationary animals in the story, I found this part the weakest link.
Better is the confident but ever cautious lion tamer. Dave grew up watching and worshipping Clyde Beatty, a real life animal trainer as well as an actor in adventure B movies like THE LOST JUNGLE. Morris includes old black-and-white movie footage of Beatty fighting wild animals as well as warriors incongruously dressed in Roman helmets with large wings on their backs.
"If you're not scared of them, you're in big trouble," Dave tells us about his wild animals. After relating one horror story after another, he admits that most trainers never retire, and heart attacks, not animals, kill most of them. A funny guy, he explains the reason lion tamers point the four legs of a chair at the lion. "His mind is distracted from his original thought - eat the man in the white pants," he says.
The robot scientist has a simple approach to problems. He likes to find out what every one assumes and then negates it. Everyone assumes, for example, that one needs stability to walk. After observing ants who fall all the time but are highly mobile, he designed a robot that could move by falling along. The film's title comes from his proposal for massive numbers of small robots for scientific exploration.
Rodney likes to build contraptions without knowing how they will get along in their environment. "If you analyze it too much, life becomes almost meaningless," he says. His goal is to "understand life by building something that is lifelike." His robots may have lifelike mannerisms, but they resemble nothing in nature with the possible exception of insects. Their bodies of moving circuit boards are quite a contrast to the interspersed science fiction footage of man-like robots. Ever the dreamer, Rodney talks of a future with twenty tiny robots for a dollar, whose sole purpose would be to come alive and clean your television whenever it is turned on.
My favorite part was Ray's mole-rats. Small moles without fur, they live in large ant-like colonies. Among their more bizarre habits are what he calls their "Zen bowel movements." Their feces are normally hard, except when they have hungry children. Their kids live on a diet of soft feces, and the adults can control whether to emit the hard ones or the soft ones.
FAST, CHEAP, AND OUT OF CONTROL runs a fast 1:20. It is rated PG and would be fine for kids five and up, but younger ones might be scared by the lions. I recommend the picture to you and give it ***.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: October 9, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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