Bitter Lake is described as "a new, adventurous and epic film that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can't really see the world any longer".
Unfortunately this is somewhat at odds with around 20mins (if that) of explanatory content in a film with a 136min runtime and the majority of that explanatory content consists of flat statements made by Curtis. I'd hoped for 136mins of well researched dense substantiated content what I got was a childishly simple narrative spaced out with some 100+mins of beautiful footage (much of it irrelevant or unexplained). Spend 5mins on Wikipedia and you'd learn more than you would from this film...
To describe this as a deep and multi-layered documentary on its subject would be as naive as taking a politician's sound-bite at face value.
3 stars for the footage and soundtrack. None for the research and exposition.
Unfortunately this is somewhat at odds with around 20mins (if that) of explanatory content in a film with a 136min runtime and the majority of that explanatory content consists of flat statements made by Curtis. I'd hoped for 136mins of well researched dense substantiated content what I got was a childishly simple narrative spaced out with some 100+mins of beautiful footage (much of it irrelevant or unexplained). Spend 5mins on Wikipedia and you'd learn more than you would from this film...
To describe this as a deep and multi-layered documentary on its subject would be as naive as taking a politician's sound-bite at face value.
3 stars for the footage and soundtrack. None for the research and exposition.