HyperNormalisation

It is my sincere hope that Adam Curtis never stops using the music from THE THING. Sometimes accused of simplification or depoliticisation, his documentaries are more complex and more political than those of any other working documentarian. The way Curtis repeats elements from previous work while building upon them is a virtue that seems to usually go unremarked.

Feeling down, powerless, overwhelmed and/or apathetic? Like the world is an uncaring and terrible place and it's not getting less terrible any time soon and/or ever? Adam Curtis, building on his previous gut-punching work and with that typically soul-crushing mix of sterile footage and haunting audio, gives context for how we got where we are today and it's both eye-opening and paralyzing. PS poke me if you're up for a suicide pact.

At the risk of playing fantasy filmball, I'll be disappointed if Curtis doesn't use the natural lead-ins of Surkov and Occupy/the Arab Spring to explore the subsequent emergence of the self-described "dirtbag left" of Chapo et. al and how their aestheticized tactics and irony-couched embrace of social media relate to the cross-pollinating strains of accelerationism that require of a thinker the now-nigh-impossible task of taking science fiction as seriously as they do Marx (or vice-versa).

The central point seems to be that governance and social movements have failed because the power to change society is no longer in politics. Cyberspace helps like-minded people organize, but it's ineffective at driving materialistic change. Instead, the material world is controlled by managerial bureaucracies, increasingly deregulated, financialized, and centralized, and the government's purpose is to justify, through propaganda, the runaway existence of this new economic system.

When Curtis said something in the order of 'even the counter-culture objecting the system contributed to its perpetuation and growth', I knew this was gonna be gud. Possibly induces, at various moments, a state of existential angst by making you doubt to your worldview & proneness to the conspiratorial, and by unjustifiably adding causal weight to things in actuality largely of a mere correlational nature, seemingly using the grey areas to lend legimitacy to his arguments.

Sort of plays like an Adam Curtis Greatest Hits reel where I was hoping for something more definitive and all-encompassing. It's definitely great for what it is, but it also kind of feels like it should have been two separate films, one about the Middle East conflict and the other about neoliberal capitalism and the rise of the internet. The former seems redundant, but the latter probably could have been Curtis' masterpiece if he were able to expand on his themes even more. Next time hopefully?

Please update your media folder Mr. Curtis, 9/11 footage is not cutting it in 2016 when stuff like this is flying around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs

Good to see Curtis back at it. The 9/11 sequence was like a kind of hellish visual symphony. The perfectly timed release, just weeks out of the 2016 GE, lends US viewer/voters that much needed kick of futility and lack of trust in the system they are upholding.

Curtis is one of the great polemicists of our time. This latest documentary is like a 2.5 hour punch to the gut, which left me briefly feeling utterly bereft of hope for civilisation. Powerful, and an important counter-point to the news and analysis we see every day.

Adam Curtis is at it again, this time explaining concepts like Donald Trump and the Internet. It's not without an eye for the tragicomical, that he examines what absurd road lead us to this societal state of apathy, but don't expect it to leave you smiling. You might like Gaddafi a little better though.

This is the least compelling Curtis I've watched. It comes close to Zeitgeist sort of alarm raising where you, the viewer is fully innocent, everyone is dumb and machines have already taken over.

I had some objections and reservations against his previous works but this one hits the target. He builds on previous material; this is more general but more coherent for me. You don't have to agree on all levels of explanation on causation patterns or every single detail or connection. But the general idea is the one you should consider first, naturally. And that makes it a must see for every world citizen. Go see it immediately.

Stunningly fleet vision of the corporate dismantling of the world that really took off in the 1970s and has led to our current moment of overwhelming chaos and crisis.

Fake News. I couldn't count how many lies hypertruthisate! in this fake documentary. a left wing's propaganda that is so familiar. Democrat presidents were skipped and conservatives were destroyed. pleeeeease... have some innovation.

I like Adam Curtis but this did not hang together. The "Hypernormal" perception thread popped up sporadically as a sort of excuse for disconnected themes. Far better would have been to cut out the Jane Fonda fitness videos and have left this as the shorter documentary on Middle East conflict that it is,

An interesting kind of meta experience of the movie is that it is about the elite's inability to express complexity and it has difficulty expressing his overarching thesis from the past 15 years because that thesis is complex. Also, it was a huge miss to not even mention Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn

I'm not into the whole alarmist fad where everything is scary and it's all nobody's fault. There's too much of that in HyperNormalisation. However, it's a very interesting documentary, keeps you hooked and teaches you interesting bits about modern history along the way. Pretty good.

Around as good as Bitter Lake, if you like Adam Curtis this is a must see.

Seriously entertaining film throughout. Definitely recommended if you ever feel like the modern world is a spectacle, and often a grotesque one.

curtis'in komplocu bir bakışı olduğuna itiraz edilemez. ama komplonun, olağan düşünme tarzına dönüştüğü bir dilde konuşuyor olmak, aralarında ayrım yapabilmeyi de getiriyor sanırım. zira yer yer atlamalar yapıyor olsa da curtis, olgulara dayalı, buluntu görüntülerin iyi kurgulandığı ve kafa açıcı bağlantıların sunulduğu bir anlatı ortaya çıkarıyor. ancak tam bir belgesel gerçekliği iddiası var mı, şüpheliyim ve bu aslında iyi bir şey.

For a documentary that is almost 3 hours it never feels it. It's just a really well put together, cinematic documentary, unlike most docs that are just talking heads. The content is pretty great (the critique of leftism/modern revolutions is the best part of this whole thing), but the Middle East bit isn't dissimilar to what has been written by folks like Baudrillard already.

As fantastic and insightful as a political documentary can be with rudimentary film-making ability

hasn't aged well

the opening/abstract -to NIN of course- was so over-blown it seemed self-parody. As fun and convincing as his anlysis of neo-Liberal follies is, the lazy sneering at "the left" for letting it happen rung hollow, particularly when using OWS -largely reformist Liberals- as an example rather than actual lefties. Call-backs are one thing but recycling stuff from the blog and previous films just made this longer than necessary. Would've preferred it as another three-parter.

pretty thrilling but disorganised, the movie's begging for clear narration.

Masterful, weaving beautifully throughout the last 30-40 years that slowly evolved into this absurd era. At times, this documentary even plays with the reality its own message, furthering driving home the point of how easily "reality" has been skewed by the intersection of technology, globalization, and political opportunism.

Adam Curtis: "Politicians, financiers and technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated. Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power. And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it, because the simplicity was reassuring. Even those who thought they were attacking the system - the radicals, the artists, the musicians, and our whole counterculture - actually became part of the trickery."

Liked more than Century of the Self, perhaps because it's more contemporary to myself, but I see some of the same problems. Curtis is susceptible to producing counter-narratives that will be eagerly consumed by his political counterparts. Essentially he operates on the same dubious presumptions as any dominant narrative. The complexity he tries to capture is going to resist ANY interpretation. I don't see how this remedies the conflict of factions and mythmaking. Certainly a great piece of film.

I have noticed that all the reviews of this documentary unpick different threads as to 'what this film is about'. A genuinely deep (not perfect) piece of work that may require a number of viewings. This film may currently act like a mirror to world events where the meaning shifts in relation to it.

57 minutes

very interesting filmessay that's very well made. Even with its long running time, it never bores. But although there is some truth to the central thesis of oversimplification, the end feels rushed and it all doesn't come together that well as it should to have a real impact.

TFW even conspiracy docs are not as grim as the reality we live in (queue shot with Gaddafi's head smashed on the desert road). Also, how much does Curtis hate the PR companies? Did they try to bribe him at some point to not publish a video?

Good rundown on why nothing means anything these days, in spite of a constant flurry of emotions on social media.

Propaganda that pretends to be counter-propaganda. Have you fallen for it? Another victim of MI6.

Mind blown

Watching this in 2021, it feels incomplete, like if it had waited a little longer Curtis could have hit a more cohesive perspective of what's happening in society. As it stands, it felt like the different threads were still too disparate in 2016 to properly analyse as a whole. I don't really know if this makes sense, it's late and I'm tired

I love Adam Curtis' documentaries, and this one was quite good. But he does seem to dance around the crux of the point he's trying to make, and tie a little too much to that point. I'm also left with a bit of a loss as to what can be done about any of this.

Curtis lays out the blue-print for our echo chamber(s) and with it the illusory nature of our systems of control. Watching this post-Trump / COVID-19 - so many new questions arise: Where does this sudden violent de-acceleration leave us? As we face the prospect of post-individualism and peer into an even more digital future, what action will we take? Excited to see Curtis' next attack - and hoping more people find his work during these times of change.

26 Aralik 2017

The visuals, trippy music and the ideas are really cool in the way they complement each other. Fairly decent primer for thinkers like Baudrillard. It's a tough one to evaluate though, because it's not very rigorous and lets be honest can easily be argued to be conspiracy entertainment. Alternatively you could view it more as 'art' that expresses themes and paints of broad picture of the world, and give it a pass. Overall Curtis is a good intro to these thoughts but you need to dig deeper.

Standard Adam Curtis - which means good stuff - this time focusing on the increasingly simplified story-telling by politicians and the media, and how this unsustainable approach has affected the current world. Retreads a lot of ground from previous Curtis documentaries, and some of the abstract edits drag on a bit, but otherwise still well worth your time.