david_jinkins Reviews

Poor Things (2023)

Freedom from invisible bonds

[7/10 · 23 March 2024]

Early in Poor Things, the main character Bella discovers that she can give herself sexual pleasure. Delighted, offers to show a maid and her tutor. 'No, Bella, you musn't do that!' objects the tutor. But why not, when it feels good?

Jean Paul Sartre wrote that ''Man is condemned to be free''. We might now add woman too. Ultimately no one is forced to do anything. There are no excuses. Even if someone holds a gun to my head and tells me to hand over my money, I can choose whether to pass my wallet or to die.

Choices are constrained, of course. I cannot choose to float up into the sky and touch a cloud. Here in Denmark, I cannot talk to strangers on a bus without making everyone on the bus uncomfortable. It takes years of education, upbringing, punishment, and praise to drill such social mores into children.

Bella of Poor Things has not had time to internalize social customs, in particular what is expected of a woman. At some point, a character means to insult Bella by calling her a whore. But to Bella, it is no insult at all. She does not understand that it is considered shameful for a woman to sell sex.

Because Bella has no concept of what is shameful for a woman, she is free to follow her desires. She lives from whim to whim, and has not time for boredom. If food tastes bad, she spits it back onto her plate. If her conversation partner is dull, she brings up something more rude. If it is interesting or feels good, she does it.

Bella's absolute freedom threatens many of the male leads in the film. They each want to own her, to prevent her from talking to someone she finds more attractive or more interesting. Several of them literally lock her away. But she will not be a prisoner, and she finds her way out of each predicament to the chagrin of her would be captors.

The reactions of these men are compelling. Bella's freedom reflects how constrained real women are by the standards for their behavior ingrained in us through the culture we have inherited. Most of the time, this culture is as invisible as the air surrounding us. Poor Things is wonderful feminist art, in that it briefly makes those bonds visible.

Gandhi (1982)

A hagiographic epic

[4/10 · 27 February 2024]

Before watching Gandhi yesterday, it had been twenty or thirty years since I last saw it. Even so, I could still remember scenes and lines: "An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind." Gandhi shocked to be kicked out of first class in South Africa. Gandhi advises a Hindu rioter to raise an orphan as a Muslim. As an impressionable young man, I loved both the message of non-violence and the depiction of a saintly Gandhi.

Watching it again as a more jaded middle-aged man, I see more clearly how the controversy in Gandhi's life is glossed over. Without jumping into many particulars, Gandhi's fight to create an Indian nation comes right out of 19th century European ideas about national sovereignty. While he was dressed in "home-spun" and lived as the poor of India, he was also just as thoroughly steeped in the ideas of national determination which would have been floating around UCL when he studied there in the 1880's.

There were other aspects of the story which made me uncomfortable. The film portrays Gandhi's great power to shape the direction of Indian politics. When Gandhi asks Nehru to step down from the leadership of the new Indian state, Nehru agrees. When Gandhi fasts to stop rioting, rioting stops. When Gandhi marches to the sea, everywhere he goes, people chant his name. The film portrays this power as good and deserved, but in his time Gandhi was a controversial figure. Some residents of India would have been less happy with his having so much power over their lives. He was, after all, assassinated.

A second set of scenes which made me uncomfortable involve Gandhi's wife, Ba. In the first, middle-aged Gandhi and Ba perform what I take to be a traditional marriage ceremony. The film plays this ceremony as a sweet declaration of love between the two. During the ceremony, Ba declares that Gandhi will be both her best friend and her sovereign lord. Aren't those two roles incompatible? Later in the film, and elderly Ba tells a group of women that Gandhi tried to stop having sex with her four times and failed, but then finally made a solemn vow and succeeded -- so far. The last line is played for laughs, but why is Ba's sex life governed by how Gandhi feels?

The non-violent method of protest championed by Gandhi works well in a world where we believe every human to have dignity. This is a common belief of our time, and I was happy to watch a film which champions the value of non-violence with my impressionable teenage son. As a more mature film-viewer, however, I now prefer more nuanced art.

The Boy and the Heron (2023)

Studio Ghibli with spirit away

[5/10 · 25 February 2024]

Cute creatures? Check. Adolescent main character? Check. A hidden world with its own rules? Check. Low number of frames per second? Check. All the elements of classic Ghibli are on display in A Boy and His Heron. And yet it is missing something that is present in the greatest Ghibli films like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro -- the overarching metaphors of childhood that make those titles great.

Spirited Away is about a girl discovering her inner strength. My Neighbor Totoro follows two girls finding solace and distraction in a new village while their mother is gravely ill. A Boy and His Heron is about a boy who is related to a wizard and a castle which fell to earth from space. There may have been a deeper meaning, but if so, it was lost on me.

Even Joe Hisaishi wasn't up to his usual standard. The score to A Boy and His Heron had more of a conventional anime sound, with simple pop culture chord progressions. Hisaishi's scores for other Ghibli films use complex jazz changes, and hauntingly voiced chords.

All in all, A Boy and his Heron is one of the middling Ghibli films.

But it is a Ghibli film nonetheless. There are wonderfully animated scenes, such as the first time the boy is confronted by the heron when waters churn and frogs and fish chant. The best parts of the film are the mysterious leadup to the boy discovering the other world. The main bad guys in the film -- man-eating parakeets -- provide comic relief.

Don't make this your first Ghibli film, but if you are a fan, it is worth a viewing.

May December (2023)

Focused on the wrong characters

[5/10 · 16 January 2024]

There are three main characters in May December. Gracie is a middle aged woman who is married to Joe, who she seduced when she was in her 30's and he was 13 years old. Gracie spent time in prison, and had her oldest daughter there. The film is set two decades later, and Joe and Gracie's youngest children are about to leave home for college. The third character is Elizabeth, an actress who is playing Gracie in an indie movie. She visits the family in order to learn about them for her role.

Gracie is played by Julianne Moore, and Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth. Both characters are interesting. Outwardly an aging Southern belle, Gracie is a manipulative monster just under the surface. Elizabeth is willing to lie, cheat, and steal in order to find the truth she needs for her portrayal of Gracie. Most of the film focuses on their relationship.

That was a mistake. The real main character is Joe. He is a quiet, loving father, and at the beginning of the film, he and Gracie get along well. A combination of his kids leaving home and Elizabeth's questions and behavior lead him to reconsider his life. He realizes that all Gracie tells him may not be true, and that he was seriously abused by her.

Joe raises butterflies, and their emergence from their cocoons is a symbol of his emergence from living under Gracie's thumb. The film ends before we find out what Joe will do. He is the most interesting character in the screenplay, and the only one who changes as the story unfolds. It is unfortunate that the editor focused so much of the film's attention on the characters played by the stars.

The Gullspång Miracle (2023)

Miracles and Lies

[9/10 · 23 December 2023]

Someone is lying. Or maybe everyone is. The Gullspång Miracle, a documentary, begins with an incredible story, and keeps delivering twists and turns, even after the credits start. I give the filmmaker Maria Frederiksson credit for not trying to manipulate the odd-shaped facts which are uncovered to fit a clear narrative. The audience, like Frederiksson, never finds out exactly who is trustworthy and who is hiding something. But everyone cannot be telling us the whole truth.

This is documentary film making at its finest. The cinematography, editing, and especially the score work together to make each twist hit hard. Each person in the film understands the world in their own way, and none of their stories are consistent with all of the facts. Each of them must decide what they believe about the past and who they really are. They must also decide what they tell the others. And what they don't.

In addition to its craft, it is refreshing to watch a film primarily featuring people older than sixty, and mostly women. This may be the only film I have ever seen that fails the reverse Bechdel test. Two men never once speak to each other in the film.

This first-class documentary deserves far more acclaim than it has won already. It is a tragedy it is not yet on wider release, or streaming anywhere. If it is playing near you, don't miss seeing it while you can.

Barbie (I) (2023)

A thoughtful blockbuster

[9/10 · 23 July 2023]

Last year I was appointed to a department hiring committee for an important position. When a colleague asked me who else was on the committee, she scoffed at the gender composition. Even though our department is half women, the hiring committee was nearly all men. I hadn't noticed until she mentioned it. What else don't I notice?

According to the philosopher Richard Rorty, art is better at changing minds than argument, because it allows the audience to see through someone else's eyes and empathize. In the Barbie movie, shortly after he arrives in the real world, Ken takes a walk through Century City in Los Angeles. Among the skyscrapers there are men in business suits, and a guy exiting a gym nods at him. A couple of guys jump out of a hummer, and policemen ride by on horses. A woman assistant is shushed by businessmen in important discussion. Finally there is a montage of men -- US presidents, movie stars, sports stars, stock traders, Mount Rushmore, and the portraits on US currency. Ken realizes that, unlike in Barbie's world, men hold the power in the real world. Ken learns to sing the 1996 Matchbox 20 hit Push, featuring the lyrics, "I want to push your around, and I will, and I will." When the song came out, it was my freshman year in high school. I must have heard it hundreds of times, but I never noticed that the lyrics hinted at violence against the singer's love interest. The film made me notice specific parts of American culture which I had absorbed growing up without thinking, and which reinforced the idea that men have the power in society.

The film will work best for an American audience. Not only would it had hit less hard if I hadn't been forced to reevaluate the messages underlying parts of the culture I grew up with, but another wonderful aspect of the film was its send-ups of American films and popular music. The opening to 2001 is ported into the wonderful first minutes of the film. A bit later, a character makes Barbie choose between continuing her fantasy life (represented by a stilleto) and learning the truth (a birkenstock sandel). There is a great musical tribute to Take on Me (I know, a-ha is Norwegian, but it was a US hit!), and a power ballad that reminded me of Free Bird. Later in the film, Ken wears a faux mink coat that I'm sure I've seen on Logan Paul. I must have missed many more.

It is surprising that Mattel signed off on the film, since it does a good job of presenting the good, the bad, and the weird of Barbie over the years. While she started out in a swimsuit, Barbies were sold in the getup of just about every profession. Girls could play with Barbie the surgeon, Barbie the scientist, or Barbie the politician, and maybe imagine themselves in those traditionally male roles. On the other hand, a teenage character points out that Barbie has given unrealistic body and beauty ideals to generations of women, and that Barbie promotes unhealthy consumer culture with all of her outfits and accessories. If nothing else, the color profile of Barbie is pink and glittery. The weird are all the discontinued barbies -- including "Growing Up Skipper", a doll with inflatable breasts.

I nicked one star because of the constant product placement and the milquetoast feel-good ending. That said, the movie is worth your time. After years of copy-paste superhero movies and CGI spectacles, the Barbie movie gives me hope for a future of more thoughtful Hollywood blockbusters.

Theatre of Thought (2022)

Thought meander like a restless wind

[3/10 · 27 March 2023]

Werner Herzog's Theater of Thought is set as a road trip across the United States. There are several clips of American highways from a driver's perspective. A ramble across long distances is an apt metaphor for the film. It is an interminable set of interviews with engineers working on new technology related to the human brain. Checking my watch part way through, I realized that I had no idea whether I was closer to the beginning or the end of the film.

Toward the end, Herzog shows the face of each of the researchers he interviewed up to that point, and voices over that not a single one could explain to him what consciousness is. Herzog was interviewing the wrong people. Neuroscientists are interested in the neural correlates of consciousness, and engineers want to figure out how to enhance people's abilities. If Herzog wanted to understand how mere matter creates experience, he should have started with his title. Daniel Dennett, the philosopher of mind, has often used the metaphor of a theater to describe the way some people think the mind works: there is a little mini person inside everyone's head who is looking at the images passing by the senses. As I was watching, I kept expecting the next interviewee to be David Chalmers, a world authority on the problem of how the brain makes consciousness.

Instead, we get Herzog asking engineers to describe their inventions, and then suddenly asking them questions like, "Do fish dream?" or "Can we use your invention to ask someone who has just died whether they are in heaven or hell?" You can see the shock on the faces of the interviewees. One says that those speculations are better discussed over a beer.

The best part of the film was a digression. We see tightrope walker Phillipe Petit of Man on Wire fame performing outside his home. Although he is now an old man, Petit is graceful and serious as he struts along on the very wire he used above the World Trade Center in 1974. But then we have to get back to the march through interview after interview of scientists. Herzog's eye for humor provided occasional relief, but not enough to make the long film worth it.

Interstellar (2014)

Great score and visuals, swiss cheesy plot

[5/10 · 22 January 2023]

In Interstellar, the music doesn't frame and enhance the story. The story is the wrapper for the film music and the visuals. I loved Zimmer's nods to Kubrick, and I could almost have just watched the galactic scenes and planetscapes set to the music with no plot at all. The music enhanced and sharpened what there was of the plot.

The plot itself did little more than provide some tension to keep the viewer awake for the film's whole three hours. There was deadly threat after deadly threat. As a whole, it was the sort of sci-fi plot that one shouldn't think too hard about for fear of it all coming apart. If you watch the film, do it for the art and the music.

Godland (2022)

Simple plot, complex film

[7/10 · 27 December 2022]

Hylberg, the director of Godland said in an interview that Danes will see his film one way, Icelanders another, and international audiences in a third way. I'm an American who lives in Copenhagen, and I have Icelandic friends. I'm right in the center of the triforce.

Hylberg is right that there are different levels at which one can understand the film. The main character, a Danish priest named Lukas sent from Copenhagen to build a church in a remote settlement, is a photographer. The first frames of the film announce that it is based on early photographs of Iceland found in a wooden box. Hylberg admits in interviews that this premise was entirely contrived, but as an unknowing audience member, I thought the film was recreating the circumstances behind the actual photographs found in the box. Photography is the idiom of the camera work, with beautifully framed, lingering shots of the Icelandic wilderness.

On another level the film is about colonialism. Lukas does not speak Icelandic, and cannot understand the Icelanders that port his supplies on the long journey across the country from coast to coast. He disregards the advice of the locals, and the trip turns deadly. He falls ill and becomes delirious, and his porters care for him drag him on a tarp behind a horse. When he arrives at his destination, a Danish settler asks him why he didn't just sail directly to the settlement. It turns out that the ordeal was a choice, so that Lucas could get to know Iceland. Lucas continues his photography, but all but ignores the Icelanders. In a montage, nearly every photograph he takes is of a Dane, often as not beautifully framed by Icelandic nature. As time goes by, he feels about Iceland more and more like my Turkish friend does about Istanbul. Beautiful place, except for all the people.

A third level of the film is the permanence of nature and the finiteness of life. The camera follows the breaking and butchering of a sheep by the Icelanders, and there are a series of overhead shots of a decomposing horse. Human cadavers turn up here and there as well. Death is mixed in with the indifference and continuity of the landscape and the seasons.

This is film as art, and the pacing is slow. The meditative, long camera shots ask the viewer to contemplate its message as part of the viewing experience. The filming was also slow, taking place over two years, and one of the young girls in the settlement grows visibly from the first time we meet her to her last scenes. This isn't an adventure story, it is a deliberative walk through 19th century Iceland, with an unlikable guide. I like the way that critic Alan Zilberman put it in his review: this is the kind of film the viewer has to meet halfway.

Whiplash (2014)

Weighing greatness against happiness

[10/10 · 23 December 2022]

The other reviews here do a fantastic job of highlighting the elements that make Whiplash a good film, among them excellent acting and a well-paced and plotted screenplay. Rather than repeat what others have said, let me draw out a philosophical message from the film.

What is the point of life? One common answer is to be happy and to flourish. Another common answer is to lessen the suffering and increase the happiness of others. Friedriech Nietzsche had another perspective. For Nietzsche the point of human life is greatness. It doesn't matter if Genghis Khan was cruel and left destruction and suffering wherever he went. He was also free and powerful, and the author of a great legacy. His conquests generated an empire that continued a hundred years after his death. Better to have all the suffering, death, and tears rather than lose the greatness of one Genghis Khan.

This view is abhorrent on its face. Should we lionize murderous villains like Stalin or Idi Amin because they were undeniably powerful and free? And yet, Whiplash makes an insidious case for doing just that. The film makes an argument for accepting suffering in the pursuit of greatness, even the suffering of innocents, if it is required to make extraordinary someone with the requisite ability and drive. From the beginning of the film, the band leader Fletcher brutally abuses his young proteges. If his actions cause most of the young musicians to suffer deeply, that is the price required for the production of greatness. If we don't agree with him by the end of the film, at least we can see the draw of his position.

Whiplash makes a viewer question her common-sense morals. Is it always good to decrease the suffering of fellow human beings? Forcing the observer to view the world in a new way is what makes Whiplash not just a good film, but a great work of art.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

A darker fantasy, inspired by Disney

[7/10 · 4 December 2022]

Magic exists in each of Guillermo del Toro's beautiful worlds, but there are limits to its power. As one character in his new childrens' film Pinocchio says, "there are rules, and they must be obeyed". Decisions have consequences. The characters are in real danger.

Del Toro's Pinocchio is inspired by the Disney classic, and there are few plot surprises. When Sebastian J. Cricket is promised a single wish in the first few minutes of the film, we know what it will eventually be used for. It's the world that del Toro builds that makes the film worth watching.

Pinocchio's world is brimming with del Toro's distinctive fantasy. Beautifully imagined spirits descended from those in Pan's Labyrinth follow the characters. Scenes in the underworld are, as Pinocchio says at one point, comprised of rabbits, games, stars, and lots of blue sand.

The film opens at the foot of a grave, and death and loss haunt the main characters. The setting is Fascist Italy during the second world war. Even with such serious themes, it is not a heavy movie. In Disney style, the characters occasionally break out in song. Young children will probably be oblivious to the way the baddies are not only frustrated, but are doomed to violent ends.

Even if it is beautifully rendered, it is, after all, a childrens' film. The characters are thin, and we know who to root for and who to boo from the start. That keeps Pinnochio from real greatness. Even so, it is pleasant enough to live in such beautiful fantasy for a couple of hours. Worth a watch for del Toro fans.

Palm Springs (2020)

Updated Groundhog Day with a twist

[7/10 · 28 November 2020]

It is hard to write about Palm Springs, without comparing it to the classic 1993 Harald Ramis film Groundhog Day. I don't think the comparison is unfair - I have no doubt that the Palm Springs script writers watched Groundhog Day and realized there was still a lot of unexplored potential in the main plot device. The characters are stuck in a time loop. Whatever they do, when they sleep or die they just wake up at the beginning of the same day.

The main innovation in Palm Springs is that when Sarah (Cristin Milioti) gets trapped in the time loop, she has Nyles (Andy Samburg) to act as her guide. Nyles has been trapped in the loop for a long time, and he is able to show Sarah how to pleasurably frit away her unlimited time. Having two people in the loop allows for both new hijinx, hilarious banter, and more characters to development. In the time loop genre, only the characters who repeat days can really grow.

Palm Springs succeeds as a fun, unassuming comedy film, but it doesn't have the lasting impact of Groundhog Day. What made Groundhog Day memorable was the growth of Bill Murray's character from a self-obsessed misanthrope into a generous community man. Groundhog Day is a funny movie, but the movie isn't really about the laughs.

Palm Springs is the opposite. There is some character growth, some minor plot twists, and a Deus-ex-machina ending to tie things up. But the story is secondary to the comic set pieces. There are some great gags in Palm Springs. I laughed out loud several times. Both Samburg and Milioti shine during the zaniest moments. Both are natural comic actors, and both their acting and the script provide lots of entertainment.

The humor is also much raunchier than in Groundhog Day. Sex and drugs are major elements, and the language is definitely adult. It was the perfect film for a date night with my wife. It was light and funny, and made for a fun end to our evening. Then we went home, and fell asleep, and in a year I'm sure we won't remember a thing about it.

Another Round (2020)

A drunken apology

[8/10 · 11 October 2020]

Another Round is a protest film. The film protests against prohibitionism. Denmark has a culture of drinking. Traditionally Danes drink when they are celebrating, and they drink to break the ice. Having a beer with a working lunch would not have raised an eyebrow as little a decade or two ago. It isn't uncommon for highschoolers to drink heavily on weekends. A Swedish character in the film says, 'everyone in this country drinks too much.'

But Danish drinking is on the decline. Today Danes buy half as much alcohol per person as they did twenty years ago (based on my own calculations from Denmark Statistics). In the last six years I have been at Copenhagen Business School, the university has banned drinking on campus except with special permission, and more or less eliminated Intro Week, a heavy drinking series of ice breaking events which is tradition at Danish universities.

The film is about four high school teachers who only go through the motions work, and are unsatisfied with their home lives. When the main character Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) asks his wife if he has become boring, her evasive answer tells him all he needs to know. Early in the film one of the teachers quotes Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skaaderud, that people are born with a bit too little alcohol in their blood. Martin sneaks some vodka into the school the next day, and his teaching goes much better than usual. The friends meet again, and decide to use themselves as test subjects for Skaaderud's theory.

It isn't only the characters who are intrigued with the hypothesis that alcohol can improve our lives. Thomas Vinterberg, the director and co-screen writer, is completely on board. The film is a paean to how drinking can make us more fun and more interesting. It makes the teachers more creative and braver. It reduces students' anxiety. It reignites the characters' dying romantic relationships, and strengthens their bonds with friends.

There is, of course, another side of alcohol, as the characters find out when they up their doses. Alcohol is associated with crimes of many sorts, from petty crime like vandalism to violent crimes like assault. Drunk driving makes roads less safe. We all know people whose lives have been destroyed by too much drinking. The economist and cultural critic Tyler Cowen has written that it is appalling that we drink such a dangerous substance in front of our children.

Another Round does not ignore the negative consequences of alcoholism. Later in the film, alcohol causes some serious consequences for one of the characters. But for the most part alcohol does not create problems for the characters as much as solve them. Heavy drinking is like a coming of age ceremony. Not everyone who goes through it comes out unharmed, but those that do are changed for the better. The thesis of the film, in a word, is that alcohol is good for people, most of the time.

The film is worth a view, if for nothing other than the provocative point it makes. It does not hurt that Mads Mikkelsen's performance is spectacular, as we have come to expect. So, do as the rest of the audience in the Danish movie screening I saw did, and watch the film with a beer in hand. Will drinking benefit your experience? Probably.

The Social Dilemma (2020)

Preaching to the choir

[4/10 · 28 September 2020]

The Social Dilemma is an unlikely hit on Netflix. Most of the 94-minute documentary is simple interviews with worried former tech-industry executives. The interviews are interspersed with a dramatized story about Ben, a teenager whose life is controlled by personified AI algorithms. Rather than building up to a climax, the documentary examines several problems with social media one by one. The heavy focus on interview snippets and the laundry-list approach is a recipe for a boring movie, but The Social Dilemma has garnered nearly universal acclaim.

Early in the The Social Dilemma, several of the former tech execs are asked by the interviewer to describe the problem with social media. The execs are momentarily tongue-tied. The impression the documentary wants to give is that there is so much wrong with social media that the experts don't know where to start. But maybe the answer is just hard to summarize. In the last decade, social media has been associated with scandal after scandal - Russian vote tampering, the livestreaming of the mosque shooting in New Zealand, the promotion of extremist conspiracy theories, etc. The documentary assumes that its viewers already agree that social media has a problem. Like the execs being interviewed, we just can't say exactly why.

One recurring point in the documentary is that social media companies don't have the best interests of their users at heart. A text frame announces that 'if you don't pay for a product, you are the product.' In particular the user's attention is what can be sold to advertisers. (Another text frame quotes data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte: Only two industries refer to their customers as users, illegal drugs and software'.) Social media companies do whatever they can to attract and hold the attention of users. The companies employ powerful artificial intelligence to predict what will bring a user to the app, and keep them there.

If we stop there, the way social media keeps us connected sounds dystopian. But companies never have the best interests of the customer at heart. 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest,' wrote Adam Smith. Even if social media companies are out to harvest our attention, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The outcome is what matters, not the motive. If social media companies keep our attention, it may be by giving us content that we find entertaining or informative. Maybe we go back to Youtube because we are addicted. Or maybe those dystopian algorithms suggest media we find worth watching. We all have choices about how we spend our time. The Social Dilemma suggests we don't have any choices to make.

The word 'manipulated' came up again and again in the documentary. Users of social media are being manipulated to use the apps in a way that is not good for them. In fact, many users are 'addicted' to social media. This language reminded me of Marxist language about the 'exploitation' of workers. The word itself tells us how we are supposed to feel about the practice. If we instead said users are 'persuaded' to spend time on social media, the whole market sounds less ominous, but the meaning of the word isn't much different.

As a little aside, I watched The Social Dilemma with Netflix closed captioning on. Closed captioning contains both subtitles, and also a description of non-dialogue sounds as well. When the discussion was related to suspicious practices of tech companies 'ominous music' was played. When a character in the dramatization suggests that we use less social media, 'energizing music' was played. The captioning parted the curtain a little bit so I could see behind the scenes how the film makers aimed to 'manipulate' or 'persuade' the audience into certain feelings by using musical cues.

This isn't to say that there is nothing worrying about social media. The effect of social media on children emphasized by the The Social Dilemma is genuinely worrying. Children, especially pre-teen children, are not mature adults. Children are often gullible, and make poor decisions. We cannot expect them to make decisions which are in their own best interest. Social media for children should be regulated similarly to how children's television is regulated. Short of that, parents should limit their pre-teens' connections to social media, and regularly look through what they are doing online.

The documentary ends with a short discussion of the existential risk of social media. That is, the chance that unregulated social media will lead to the end of humanity as we know it. This far-fetched idea is endorsed by a couple of the experts who appear repeatedly in the documentary. I am not sure I understand exactly the mechanism by which social media would end the human race, but I think the fact that several of the interviewees support it is telling. The former execs that are interviewed in The Social Dilemma all spent much of their careers thinking about social media. Since social media is their life's work, they might think it is more important than it really is.

The Social Dilemma is a long diatribe, with some interesting ideas and observations thrown in along the way. I think it could have been cut down significantly, and I did not find the dramatization helpful. The mediocre documentary is boosted by plugging into the current widespread skepticism about the role of social media in our lives. If you enjoyed this review, don't forget to smash that like button.