Can't get you out of my head
An Emotional History of the Modern World
To try describe the work of Adam Curtis is to look at cryptographic code. Behind the garble of alphabets and numbers lie secrets and plain truth waiting to be cracked, waiting to be devoured. As with any code it takes patience and skill to understand what lies behind. His narratives jump timelines and geographic locations, his thesis is a constant stab in rules of Aristotelian dramatics. At times a little more context is needed to decode the events Curtis jumps through, some of them are too outlandish for the generations that come after them.
Without the BBC's emblem radiating on the top of left, it is hard to believe that it is not the work of a master conspiracy theorist, his ideas when at their mildest taunt our own ignorance. But Adam Curtis is a gentle historian, he knows that we don't know and he makes a compelling case for us to revisit our ignorance and find a voice for all the horrors we experience but cannot explain. He guides us with our hands softly enmeshed in his, while his calm voice guides us through our own journey of life. He gives meaning in a system where we have long forgotten that one exists (that is except money) and Can't get you out of my head is a spiritual canon that reminds us where we are and how we got there.
Adam Curtis occupies the diametrically opposite side of the film universe Frederick Wiseman operates in. But like Wiseman, his films are a meticulous collection of arcane film clips stitched together in tedium that both tell a story and don't at the same time. Curtis' use of music is another major tour de force, joining forces with David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky in creating the perfect marriage between image and music. One can be sure that a mixtape with the music from any recent Adam Curtis film will be stuck on loop. This electric pairing also serves in increasing the shelf life of his documentary material. One can watch an episode of Can't get you out of my head twice with getting bored and further repurpose it as a podcast substitute.
Can't get you out of my head is one of the best films I have come across in the recent past, one that induced a long hangover meaning that it would be impossible to enjoy other films without Curtis' vision projecting on the back of my head. I cannot recommend enough for everyone to get drunk on his wisdom.