The peculiar title of director Errol Morris' latest documentary "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" comes from a proposal for NASA to employ miniature robots in intergalactic exploration. In the film, robot specialist Rodney Brooks suggests that, just as humans and animals have colonized the Earth over eons, so will his insect-like silicon creations infest other worlds in the future.
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Fast, Cheap & Out of Control At the Michigan Theater |
Morris, himself one of the most idiosyncratic directors in history, crafts a particularly subtle yet moving film that aims to explain the mechanics of consciousness. As in his other movies - most notably, "The Thin Blue Line" and "A Brief History of Time" - Morris arrives at his point by conducting interviews with ordinary people whose insight proves more profound than one would expect.
This documentarian does not preach or force judgment; his mastery lies in his ability to mix verbal and visual images. Occasionally, he will record a person's sometimes naïve thoughts and overlap related cartoons or stock movie footage to create an overarching truth under which all his subjects are linked. Oftentimes, as one man in this film discusses the nuances of his profession, Morris shows another similarly performing his job - we see that the two are surprisingly interconnected.
In "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control," the topiary gardener is a simple, soft-spoken man who spends his life manually trimming hedges into the shapes of animals. He is in love with his craft and delights over the control he wields with non-electric hand shears. To hear him speak of his fear of the hi-tech world vividly contrasts with the robot designer who eagerly awaits a mechanical revolution.
Still, both men share a passion for nature: Each studies the animal world and mimics it in his creations. Similarly, the wild animal tamer and the Mole-Rat specialist are linked by their enthusiasm to understand exotic animals. All four men hope to control their surroundings; they are the omnipotent rulers of their respective worlds. And yet after 85 minutes, we realize that, like us, they are quite helpless to the wills of science, society and the universe.
Like in his previous films, Morris' "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" depends on interviews - in which the subject speaks directly into the camera - and quirky music that sounds like twisted circus rhythms combined with New Age synthetics. (Alas, veteran TV and stage musician Caleb Sampson has usurped composer Philip Glass' position as Morris' right-hand man; nonetheless, Sampson does a formidable job.)
Refreshingly, Morris here increases his use of live-action footage, including old Saturday morning cliffhanger serials starring lion tamer Clyde Beatty, to elevate the visual experience to the same level as the aural.
While his older films, like the pet cemetery lament "Gates of Heaven," deal primarily with static camera shots and relatively motionless interviewees, this movie is pleasingly dynamic. Cinematographer Robert Richardson cunningly employs fast- and slow-motion special effects, pictures of each man in his strange element and near-expressionistic images of lightning crashing and moles burrowing through miniature subterranean passageways.
Although documentaries typically present social and historic ills in hopes of educating their audience, this film leaves morals for the viewer to decide. It is more interested in telling stories and painting broad portraits of the human landscape than it is in applying any sort of political dogma. When "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" is finished, we realize that politics and philosophy seem awfully insignificant when the answers to the universe lie in a bunch of fierce felines and buck-toothed rodents.
11-10-97
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