I Am (2010)
I Am (2010) — Tom Shadyac, the director of Patch Adams, directed a documentary about interconnectivity. I feel it went about as well as you might infer from that first sentence. Firstly, Shadyac should not narrate a movie. I get that he wants to frame this as a realization he had following a life-changing experience, but the dude does not make a good narrator. Second, the film brings up some interesting ideas but doesn’t really go over them with any real depth. It lasts about an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s not a lot of time for thoroughness. Third, the film derides “scientific” understanding of the world (always a red flag) and then attempts to scientifically back up its own hypotheses. That kind of annoying pseudo-science almost knocks this down the level of shit like The Secret. Not quite, though, as The Secret set the bar oh-so-very low. Fourth, I do not see why this movie was edited so fucking quickly. Fast-cutting works for some movies (Natural Born Killers comes to mind) but in a documentary about outlook on life maybe a few more shots that last longer than three seconds? Fifth, some of the soundtrack choices just seem random like the Black Eyed Peas, Sigur Rós, and a weird techno remix of “Man With a Harmonica” from Once Upon a Time In the West (Don’t fuck with Ennio Morricone or Clint Eastwood will ride up on a horse and shoot you.*) You know if this movie reaches a lot of people and gets them to act in a way that is more harmonious with their fellow man and the planet that we live on, I really can’t fault it but it’s still mediocre-at-best film-making.
*EDIT: I realize that Clint Eastwood was not in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (one of my all-time favorite movies) and thusly my parenthetical aside is misleading. However I feel that Eastwood’s connection to Ennio Morricone’s scores for Leone’s earlier “Man With No Name” Trilogy justifies the comment.
Persistence of Vision 