Neo was a computer programmer before he was taken out of the Matrix, but Morpheus had a much crazier profession as a pink hat-wearing, kiddie song-singin’, slightly creepy cowboy. “The globe screams whenever I say the word more. Can this be real?”
“If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Wise words, Morpheus. Man, after this, life spent escaping Sentinels aboard the Nebuchadnezzar must have been a freaking cakewalk.
Errol Morris presents a master class in the power of editing with 1997′s “non-fiction” work, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. The film chronicles the lives of 4 men with interesting careers, who are seemingly unconnected in any meaningful way, and has been classified as a “non-fiction” work as opposed to a documentary thanks to its eschewing of conventional methods.
In the movie, we are introduced to a lion tamer, an expert in hairless mole rats, a man who creates topiaries, and a robotics scientist from M.I.T. As the film progresses, Morris interweaves their disparate stories by cutting footage together, and showing visuals from one story with narration from another. In a unique way, Morris effectively demonstrates how interconnected everyone is, and how common themes permeate the lives of all humanity.
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control utilizes a number of film formats, and even introduced an invention new to filmmaking: the Interrotron, with which interview subjects are able to see both the camera and the person who is interviewing them, creating the illusion of eye contact with the audience.
Hairless Mole Rat Expert Ray Mendez
The movie is a singular experience, entirely unconventional and intelligently constructed. It’s earned a spot on our list of Neglected Gems because the few Criticker users who have seen it have given high marks to it. Errol Morris is one of our most talented documentarians, and his consistently wonderful films, and this one in particular, deserve not to be neglected…
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