Review by gloria wong.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about watching Adam Curtis as a reviewer is knowing how difficult his work will be to encapsulate. The Trap could correctly be described as documentary on reigning notions of freedom and how they came to be. But that would rather be like describing War and Peace as a book about the comings and goings of a group of Russians - not wrong, but hardly to the point. Perhaps one of the greatest documentarians in the world, Curtis is also responsible for the landmark BBC mini-series Century of the Self (2002), and The Power of Nightmares (2004). In many ways, the three series can be read together as different facets of Curtis' on-going dissection of Western (specifically, British and American) society. Drawing connections between applied mathematics, philosophy, politics, commerce and psychology, Curtis' vision of the world runs from tragi-comic to downright bleak, seeing major historical (and current) events as the result of ideals and ideas reaching their inevitable conclusions in context rather than people in power enacting plans (in Curtis' world, even elaborate conspiracies don't produce their intended effects).

The central argument in The Trap is that our current interpretation of 'freedom' was born out of a Cold War mentality which reduced all human behaviour to then de rigeur paranoid self-interest - in essence, Cold War paradigms are still being applied to a Post-Cold War world. Drawing in particular on the work of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash and his contemporaries at the RAND Corporation think tank advancing game theory, the notion that human beings invariably act in their individual self-interest, began to pollinate in other disciplines (as far reaching as genetics) eventually reaching the popular imagination as presupposition rather than theoretical model. This school of thought lead to a radical revisioning of the public sphere in both the US and England beginning in the 1980's under Ronald Reagan's Republican administration and Margaret Thatcher's Conservative leadership, respectively.

Curtis' work is unsettling, in part because his well-structured arguments are often slyly entertaining - giving a master of the ironic montage full access to over 60 years of BBC archival footage makes for a dangerous combination. But also because watching them is like wiping down a steamy bathroom mirror - where once we could only see vague shapes we instinctively knew were there, we now see ourselves reflected back with obscene clarity.

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom
Adam Curtis | UK | 2007 | 180min

Thur. Sept. 27 | 10:00am | Empire Granville Theatre
Tue. Oct. 4 | 8:45pm | Empire Granville Theatre
Sun. Oct. 7 | 3:15pm | Empire Granville Theatre