User Reviews

HyperNormalisation is an ambitious attempt to explain how we view and understand the world we live in. We are overwhelmed by data yet become ever more trapped in silos. We struggle to know what is the "truth" whilst sometimes accepting a fake one if it suits our needs or prejudices...that applies to governments as well as the general populace. The film charts the origins of the Syrian crisis, the rise of the banks and corporates, the evolution of politicians becoming managers rather than leaders. It illustrates quite shockingly how forces unleashed by Syria and Iran in the late 70s and early 80s have come back to haunt them. There are numerous strands to this tale which also covers The Donald who has perhaps more than many exploited the increased anger and disillusionment with the world amongst many. The film shows how there is increased tendency to preach to the already converted and how social media amplifies this as it runs on algorithms based on individuals likes and interests. It's hard to summarise effectively but it is thought provoking and is a noble attempt to lift the veil on the world we live in and how it can be manipulated,obscured and presented in a multitude of ways.

Adam Curtis argues that our world is built on a foundation of lies. Lies that help us accept that those in control know what they are doing, despite history proving again and again that even the most powerful politicians are just as in the dark as you or I. Curtis gives example after example. Neoliberal policy was the height of this theory, but neoliberals used it as a selling point and argued they were 'managers' who needed to just 'tweak the system.'

Francis Fukayama wrote the popular 'The End of History' in 1992 that was the exclamation point at the end of the Neoliberal story. But that narrative has collapsed in ways unimaginable to anyone in a pre-2001 world. Our political and economic systems are unfit to tackle domestic problems, let alone global ones (global warming and austerity). Curtis doesn't really say whether this is a bad or good thing, and I'm not sure either. Do people want to live like this? That could be the case. But before the viewer can start to think about their answer they must first recognize the question, and HyperNormalisation deftly sets up the premise. I am sure this film will continue to predict the future.

Howard Schultz entire campaign strategy is questions aren't important, only answers. It's like Schultz watched this film and came away with the completely wrong message (or right depending on your perspective and narcissism.) It's be akin to someone watching Starship Troopers and wanting to join the military, or getting a swastika tattoo after viewing American History X.

One of my favorite moments of the documentary were the parts outlining the Reagan admin's role in pushing UFO conspiracy theories, using the public as a guinea pig to see just how far misinformation can go to turn people into near fanatics about something that is on it's face completely nonsensical. And the administration succeeded wildly.

As practically any political documentary these days, this one isn't interesting because of the "facts" it reveals, but rather because of what it chooses to omit and how information is manipulated to pass for a chain of events. The most interesting observation can be summarized in an axiom: the broader (not just) a documentary's subject is, the more likely it substitutes hard facts with the film maker's personal beliefs.

One very obvious omission is that Salafism isn't even mentioned once. Salafism has been taught at Sunni theological schools at least since the 1920s, Salafism is the backbone of al-Quaida, all 9/11 attackers were Salafists, Daesh is Salafist, all individual terrorists in Europe had Salafist connections. To claim that the source of modern terrorism is Syria's Shia dictator Assad is definitely a lie. I don't know whether this means that this is a propaganda effort( the Saudis and their dirty war in Yemen are suspiciously omitted), or whether the author is simply going for the ultimate "everything-is-connected" effect - that would be very BBC. Either way, this causality construction presents a deliberate manipulation of facts that can be easily counter-checked.

Another prominent claim of this film is that Ghaddafi was never a real threat to the Western world and merely set up as a stooge to cover up terrorist bombings actually committed by Syria or Hezbollah. There is no convincing argument delivered why this should be the case. The film maker argues that the US wanted to somehow cooperate with Syria, when all the hard facts point to the opposite. If you're into conspiracy theory, one might argue that the Ghaddafi's fall intensified the refugee crisis in the EU, which would then be the ultimate target of everything the US messes up. If you're not a conspiracy fan, you might as well go with "if nobody knows anything, you gotta do something, so that it seems you know everything".

Another claim is that Assad used Hezbollah for suicide attacks against soft targets as a revenge for Kissinger's obstruction of a unified Arab world. That concept, however, originated with Egypt's Nasser in the 1950s, and the first organized terror attack in the Western world was the PLO's assassination of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972. It was the Sunni PLO that Shia Hezbollah learned terror from, not Hamas from Hezbollah after the Sabra/Shatila massacres of 1982. Just look at the sequence of events, people. The OPEC siege, Entebbe, Mogadischu, all that happened before and had multiple causes.

What is true, however, is the assessment that the failure of the Arab Spring and the failure of Occupy can be traced to what I hold to be the only profound statement made in this film: that the internet may have the power to bring people together against something, but cannot substitute an alternative idea. Today's protest movements all fail because they are not based on an underlying concept. Curtis should have added that, as a consequence, their failure cannot be ascribed to Islam. It's rather the incapability of an internet image culture to formulate strategy and organize leadership - just look at the Pirate Party, or #Black Lives Matter's strategic error not to reach out to Hispanics, which would multiply their base.

Another interesting bit is the piece on Russian media manipulation by Putin's confidant Surkov, supporting both protest groups and right-wing nationalists in an attempt to rile them up against each other - inspired by absurdist theater - which is fascinating. This is, alas, only mentioned in passing - the focus drifts to Trump's campaign and culminates in the common theme of keeping the public in a disorganized state of uncertainty in the face of an ever changing narrative. However, this is not a new idea as this film may make you think, but in fact a cornerstone of postmodern philosophy and media theory (just google Postman).

So watch this with caution. There are some good points to take home with, but the alternative reality this film constructs is just as unconvincing as the official story. The simple truth to a slightly older academic like me is that today nobody knows anything anymore because they're constantly overloaded with useless info. The film maker walked right into this trap himself, by coming up with his specific "what if" scenario, and then eliminating every fact that doesn't work with his interpretation from his film.

Adam leads us, once again, through our recent history. Less animated than Pandora's Box or The Trap.

If you are at the least bit interested in psychology, what makes you, you it is worth it. A good 3 hours long with familiar footage, factual.

Whether or not you agree with his narration or ideology, it raises questions even today. It gives insights, unseen. And can prompt investigation instead of blind acceptance bias.

Black Swan theory is sort of touched on, unknown unknowns. But we are mainly back to Game Theory. How the state measures us as numbers. He examines why you would strap bobs and blow yourself up, with others. Something we would see on Sep 11 2001.

One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. I watched the twin towers fall live.

A friend suggested this was worth a watch and defo if you've got the time it does make a convincing narrative for why today is so screwed up based on some interlinked events a generation+ ago coupled with weak politicians in the UK and US in the intervening years who were happy to pretend the world was simpler than it actually was. In short it traces the path from Kissinger screwing the Palestinians over in the '70s through the financial crashes to where we are today with huge swathes of the Arab world destabilised and the most unlikely inept leaders either side of the Atlantic.

Any readers of Private Eye will be familiar with some of the material and it does miss the manipulations of Saudi out of the equation.

It is a mis-interpretation of the past, if not outright status-quo propaganda.

The documentary has these enormous suppositions that come from.. out of someone's ass perhaps? Um, excuse me, I grew up in the eighties and nineties, and to put a blanket statement over the entire western culture that everyone gave up hope of better things in the nineties is utter farcical bull crap. Really? The stock market was booming, (due to interest rate manipulation by the fed) the internet and bio-pharma boom was happening, and this film states that "everyone gave up ideas of a better future???" It then plays some movie clips over and over again and subsequently shows 9/11 footage as supposed obvious conclusion to fear and foreboding in America (and it seems the west in general) and the terror attacks were just a natural outcome from all of that? The movie even begins talking about NYC in the seventies running out of money and them waiting for the banks to come in and buy their bonds.. this had an inkling of interest for me, based on my understandings of the way the banks in America, especially after the forming of the federal reserve in 1913, behaved. They created, supported by Keynesian economists, the idea of the "business cycle." A complete sham that enormous amounts of westerner's and even the world in general, believe in. The business cycle is nothing more than the regular bailing out of the banks. Look no further than the GFC to confirm this.

The Fed manipulates and lowers interest rates, the speculative markets and housing skyrocket, and then, low and behold, it all crashes! What to do? Punish the bankers that made shoddy investments? Throw any of them in jail? NO! Pay them gobs and gobs of taxpayer money. Sink the nation further into debt and provide more interest revenue streams to the banks, as they simultaneously proceed to do it all over again! Lower rates, the market soars, the bubbles inflate! Look at Deutsch Bank: 65 TRILLION in derivatives and there stock valuation of such a supposedly first class investing institution is less than TWITTER!! The derivatives they sit on top of equal 19 times the GDP of the most powerful market share of the EU: Germany!! Think of the massive jenga stack/bubble that is. Amazing.. here we go again, its not a matter of IF but WHEN this thing is going to blow.

What this FILM really misses is the financial ties to everything. Money runs the world and the FED with its criminal monopoly of the US dollar is on of the kings. This massive crash in 2008 happens, we QE and lower rates and... no hyper inflation! How come? Man, if it was just printing money and lowering rates, all of the banana republics and African dictatorships would be the most powerful and wealthy nations in the world! How do we do it? Well this film alludes to it in the beginning: it had something to do with that massive war criminal, Henry Kissinger.

This is the man who colluded with McNamara and Nixon to bomb Cambodia back to the stone age and created a power vacuum there that led to the genocide and slaughter of 2million people. Nice bit that was huh? Pol Pot running around and having his henchmen photograph and then systematically torture and murder most of the population. Forgot to mention that little feather in Kissinger's cap. But Kissinger also did some other things that are allowing us to export our inflation today to the rest of the world. He created the Petro-dollar cycle. You see, Nixon was at war in Vietnam, things were going well, slaughter was happening, the military industrial complex was making fat green. But there was a limit to it all: the pesky gold standard. You were limited by how much you could budget for war efforts by the amount of gold you had to back your dollars with, a nice check, a discipline for not over-spending. What to do? Well, you blame the international speculators, say you are saving the dollar from the gold hoarders around the world, and well.. cut the dollar loose from the gold standard.

At the same time, what the film and Adam Curtis conveniently did not mention about Kissinger's dealings in the Middle East, he convinced the Saudi's and their oil producing friends of a protection racket. We would back them militarily in the Middle East if they would agree to only sell oil for US dollars. Yep, it was that simple. These two things kicked off the petro-dollar cycle: it goes like this: the fed creates dollars out of thin air, then the US government and the commercial banks borrow those dollars (at interest, of course) and then we, and the rest of the world, buy our oil from the middle east. Then Saudi Arabia and its pals take their profits and put them back into the Federal Reserve (specifically the New York branch). Then... get this brilliance... the Fed takes those dollars and loans them out again.. at interest! Phenomenal! A double loan occurs for money created out of thin air! I've written a book so far, so I will stop there, but research this yourselves folks.. don't believe the crap from this piece of crap from the msm. In conclusion, it is over-simplified garbage that paints a one-sided, dangerous picture.

Do not BELIEVE my words, research instead of believing a neatly pieced but through out and through out fictional story with a biased geopolitical agenda. Where's the talk about Wikileaks, Clinton getting funds from Qatar,which has openly supported ISIS, the Qatar-Turkey Pipeline vs. Syria-Iran-Iraq Pipeline. These things were not mentioned because it is a propaganda piece, nothing more and just in time for the election.THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS IN GEO-POLITICS, remember that.