FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL (Sony Classics) Featuring: Dave Hoover, George Mendonca, Rodney Brooks, Ray Mendez. Producer: Errol Morris. Director: Errol Morris. MPAA Rating: Unrated (no objectionable content) Running Time: 85 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL may be the most reflexive film experience of the year, as well as one of the richest. As he did in previous efforts like GATES OF HEAVEN and A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, director Errol Morris charges the non-fiction film with a unique energy as he celebrates the out-liers of American culture. His subjects this time around are four men who, at first glance, appear to have little in common. Dave Hoover is a circus wild animal trainer; George Mendonca is a topiary gardener; Rodney Brooks is a robotics engineer; Ray Mendez is an entomologist studying the insect-like African mole rat. For 85 minutes Morris lets them speak passionately about their crafts, until you begin to suspect that FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL is less about those four men than it is about Morris himself.
That's not to say that the four men are not interesting subjects. Mendez proves to be the star of the bunch, an animated character in a butterfly bow tie who discusses the mole rat with a delight transcending scholarship; Brooks also offers his insights on artificial intelligence with the wide-eyed, mad-scientist glee. Yet Morris isn't necessarily interested in painting detailed portraits of his four subjects. Though he shows each one at work for brief snippets, he eschews the traditional documentary approach of following them around from minute to minute. Frequently, he simply uses their voices to underscore stock footage, or scenes unrelated to their specific occupations. Morris teases with darting images, forcing us to draw connections where connections aren't obvious. In so doing, he reveals the connection between the four men as people who draw connections. Each one sees something beyond the obvious in his chosen field, applying unexected psychology to animals, plants and even machines. Each is both an explorer and (in the film's most frequent motif) a circus performer -- they do what others would never think of doing with an enviable singularity of purpose.
The same sentiment could be applied to Morris himself. Where most documentarians seek to capture nobility or significance through big names or big events, Morris peers into more obscure corners to find the beauty in eccentricity; where most documentarians consider overtly "cinematic" non-fiction works somehow tainted, Morris creates vivid visual tapestries which should make Oliver Stone shake his head in embarrassment (and he uses Stone's frequent cinematographer Robert Richardson, just to compound the misery). Simply put, Morris creates daring, captivating work in a convention-bound genre. Perhaps one could see FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL as self-congratulatory, if it weren't such a giddy, intellectual thrill ride. When Mendez shares the idea that "the other isn't something to be feared, it's something to be explored...it's trying to figure out the purpose that interests me," he could be speaking for the director, or for any viewer ready to view the human circus through new eyes.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 talking heads: 9.
Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/ *** Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email! See the MoviePage for details, or reply to this message with subject line "Subscribe".
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews