Noam Chomsky – Chris Barsanti

It’s the kind of thing too many people are familiar with. Once middle-of-the-road parents suddenly, after immersing themselves in Fox News and talk radio, turn into angry ditto-heads, sending email forwards filled with birther conspiracy theories and ALL CAPS freakout. That’s what happened to filmmaker Jen Senko, who chronicled the experience in a new documentary.

The Brainwashing of My Dad opens this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:

Presenting itself as a Chomsky-esque takedown of a well-oiled propaganda machine, Jen Senko’s The Brainwashing of My Dad defines itself as “a story about a media phenomenon that changed a father and divided a nation.” The phenomenon Senko’s referring to is the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton identified back in 1998, after years of unhinged assaults on her and Bill by a well-funded network of conservative magazines, columnists, TV personalities and talk-radio hosts. It’s a conspiracy that Senko knows quite well, having watched her father turn from a “nonpolitical Kennedy Democrat,” the kind who would give a homeless black man money while calling him “Sir,” into the sort of splenetic crank who rants about “feminazis” and how the liberals are destroying America…

Here’s the trailer:

It depends what you mean by 'happy' — It depends what you mean by ‘happy’

What’s the best way to make a documentary about a philosopher? Sit down and talk to him. Better yet, if you’re Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) chatting with Noam Chomsky about life, the universe, and everything, animate the whole thing.

Is the Tall Man Happy? is playing now in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International; here’s part:

[Michel] Gondry’s lovably sincere and chatty Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? starts by telling how he came across [Noam] Chomsky after seeing films on him, like the epic 1992 dissertation on his media critique, Manufacturing Consent. At first, it seems like Gondry is going to overplay the worshipful naïf card in his narration, interrupting himself, acting nervous, and highlighting being out of his depth: “As you can see, I felt a bit stupid here.” But Gondry’s natural charisma takes hold of the conversation. Instead of trying to boil down Chomsky’s dense linguistic and political viewpoints, Gondry and he simply talk philosophy…

You can watch the superb trailer here:

Chris Barsanti

Tag: Noam Chomsky

Screening Room: ‘The Brainwashing of My Dad’

New in Theaters: ‘Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?”