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SXSW Review: New World Order

by Eugene Novikov Mar 23rd 2009 // 8:32PM

Filed under: Documentary, SXSW, Theatrical Reviews



The reviled September 11th "truthers" are the folks you see in Manhattan's Union Square on weekends, insisting that the tragedy was not the work of Islamic extremists, but rather an "inside job" – a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of government, big business, and the "global elite." Few thinking people credit their ravings, and rightfully so: they're ridiculous. Some go further and unload massive amounts of contempt on the conspiracy mongers, on the theory that what they do is an insult to the people who lost and risked their lives on September 11th and in its aftermath. Still others – such as one kind soul we see in New World Order, Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel's excellent new documentary about the subculture – plead with these people to do something more constructive with their lives.

Outwardly, New World Order is careful not to make these judgments. Like the best documentaries at this year's SXSW, it contains no filmmaker voiceover, and no obvious editorializing. But the insightful, expertly constructed film goes a long way toward revealing what motivates and drives these people – and in the process speaks volumes about their work. New World Order is not an agenda-driven hit piece (the filmmakers refused to comment on the merits of the various conspiracy theories in the post-screening Q&A), but it is devastating in a subtler way.

At the center of the film is Alex Jones, who is probably the conspiracy community's most prominent firebrand. An enthusiastic radio show host, filmmaker and rabblerouser, Jones seems at first to be articulate and reasonably intelligent, if a bit boorish. But then the movie allows less flattering aspects of his personality to assert themselves. At several points, we watch him enter a death spiral of irrational anger – as he rants, coherent thought deserts him and he begins to spin his own reality. Random motorists in innocuous-looking Chryslers become military intelligence agents on his trail. Inconvenient coincidences become elaborate attempts to frustrate his efforts to expose the truth. It's remarkable to watch him go, and Meyer and Neel let the cameras roll long enough to reveal his disturbing solipsism.

So Jones's motivation is that he is simply a bit crazy – a Don Quixote-like figure. For others like Luke Rudowski, the young activist who tirelessly demonstrates at Ground Zero and crashes high-profile private functions to confront Congressmen, diplomats and other officials with "the facts," it's a fundamental problem with authority, to which I'm certainly sympathetic. For still others it is, incongruously, religion. For one guy, a charismatic budding filmmaker named Timuçin Leflef, we sense that chasing these phantoms provides a life purpose.

I'm making it sound like New World Order engages in a lot of armchair psychiatry. It's not true. Meyer and Neel achieve their insights by observing intelligently and making smart choices about what to show and when. They capture the fleeting moments that reveal a lot about people: a character's look of utter contentment as he marches through the streets, shouting into a megaphone; the deranged contortions of Alex Jones's face as he performs a radio rant that recalls parts of Deliverance. And, as we go deeper into the universe that these people inhabit, the filmmakers allow an occasional, momentary foray back into the (less interesting) world that the rest of us live in – there's a wonderful shot of a group of teenage visitors to the White House walking away laughing and playfully shoving each other after having been on the receiving end of one of Jones's paranoid, borderline-incomprehensible harangues.

Look, I think that a certain amount of paranoia is healthy, about the government especially. But at some point it becomes pathological. New World Order is a nuanced, fascinating picture of how and why that happens.

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Tags: alex jones, AlexJones, andrew neel, AndrewNeel, luke meyer, LukeMeyer, new world order, NewWorldOrder

 

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