“Now I have to ask a stupid question.” – “Yes, I know.”
It is one of those films that claims to be about one thing, but actually is about something else. It claims to be about LSD and the Internet and the Unabomber, at least the title says so. But it is about everything the author / director finds fascinating when stumbling across during his trip along the US East coast. There are students and mathematicians, there are old mathematical challenges and hippie cybernetics experts. There are old men sitting in their forest cabins and reflecting on the flow of time and science. It comes back to the Unabomber and seeks to insist that there is more to him than just a murderer out of paranoia. The scope is from the technologists developing the ARPANet to the LSD experiments of Leary. The author claims both are part of the same… idea?
Either I cannot follow the complex considerations of the author, or the author’s chosen complexity is wrong in that it misunderstands what the “system” is that is under scrutiny. Admittedly, I believe both is right, with the disclaimer that many of the film’s aspects are more interesting if you happened to have had your share in the 1960s and experienced the drugs, the discussions, the media and the art of the time. The film gets carried away by a childish fascination for a murderer, and the fact that several victims and contemporaries refuse to honour a murderer by offering a sophisticated discussion about him, only encourages Dammbeck more – the fatal consequence is that at the end of the day, he is offering an ode to Ted Kacinsky, instead of positioning just to be one of the elements that were typical for the time.
thomas4cinema 