I watched it last Saturday night, personally I really like Adam Curtis's documentaries and enjoyed it as much as his others. Thing is, I totally agree with a lot of the analysis, so there is a danger of "echo chamber" but I'm not sure if there's a corresponding right wing documentary with insights as logical as the last half hour of this? Dunno. Am open to counterpoints but watching this it seemed like Curtis's "magnum opus" - like it was so long because he was coalescing many of his ideas from previous films. The points about adopting the Russian politics of illusion were first in a 10 minute (ish) piece he did for Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe a while back, and his points about suicide bombing were clearly researched during his earlier films about Al Qaeida and Islamic Fundamentalism, both of which I considered ground breaking at the time. Anyway, it just seemed like the film was so long because Curtis was trying to bring the jigsaw up to date (if not finish it).
I watched it in 2 halves, but a friend of mine took it in 4 or 5 chunks. Both of us liked it and he (my friend) was "blown away" by it not having seen any of Curtis's other docs.
Like him or loathe him, Curtis sure as shit does his research and I'd be impressed by any counterpoint that "joins the dots" as clearly.
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