Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997)
Film:
DVD:

Directed by Errol Morris
Starring Dave Hoover, George Mendonça, Ray Mendez, Rodney Brooks

Features:

• Trailers for 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters and Marvels and The Spanish Prisoner
  

Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Own it.

Errol Morris has created the all-inclusive documentary. It's really, if you think about it, concerning everything. At least that's what I read into it. Which is odd, considering the building blocks that Morris works with: the lives of four people who have very different careers. You have Dave Hoover, a lion tamer, George Mendonça, a topiary artist, Ray Mendez, a scientist who studies naked mole rats, and finally Rodney Brooks, a roboticist. As they talk about the particular obsessions that drive them, you begin to see Morris take a fractal approach to everything.

Basically, the bastardized explanation of how fractals work is "As above, so below." At any level, you see similarity. Morris cuts and pastes to prove his point, and does so with chilling results. As Brooks talks about the possibility that we may one day create a robotic next step in evolution, we see a clown in Hoover's circus being chased around the ring by a skeleton riding his back. As Mendez talks about how naked mole rats behave, we get another clip from the circus with people filing in to the stands--acting just as Mendez is describing. It's a dizzying display of editing, and its point is well made. This is all done with myriad bits of stock footage and staged shots.

The film was in my top ten for the year it came out, and it hasn't lost any of its power. Watching it again on DVD, I was struck by how I was even more moved this time around than previously. It's certainly a film that bears repeated viewings.

It's so good, in fact, you can almost forget that there's no real features to be had on the disc. Forget, but perhaps not forgive. Five years after the documentary's release, it would have been nice to have had a small featurette catching up with the four men to see how life has treated them. Or a commentary from Morris talking about the film and the realization of his intentions. Anything really--but instead you get trailers for three other films...not even one for this one. Which is a shame.

Still, the film is extraordinary and I would recommend everyone should watch it. Forget what you think you know about the ho-hum genre of the documentary. The profundity of this one will sneak up on you and bite you--and you'll thank it when it's done.