If the Cap'n has the cornhusker virus or whatever it's called, I don't know how to find out.
Everything seems perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you.
How are you?
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As promised, I did watch Religulous last night, following a long and arduous fight with the CPU hog that is Norton Anti-Virus (2005). I'd scarcely call it a documentary but it was okay for what it is: Bill Maher propaganda.
It's become difficult these days, particularly with Michael Moore and now Bill Maher and Larry Charles, to identify something as a "documentary". That's where you're going to find Religulous in video stores or wherever they sell dvds these days, but that's not really what things like Bowling for Columbine or Reefer Madness are. They're more like the persuasive papers you had to write in high school, but on film. The opinion in these films is loud and clear from frame one, which is not as evident in something like, let's say Salesman or Hoop Dreams.
Why I think Religulous works in ways that Sicko or Fahrenheit 9/11 do not is that Maher is not writing, directing, and starring in this. Larry Charles (Seinfeld, Borat) is behind the camera, and he exercises some editorial control. The setup is not dissimilar to what Michael Moore does: an interview is set up under false pretenses and then the "host (in this case, Bill Maher) gets in some cheap shots at religious figures of every denomination.
Religulous is full of cheap shots, and its clear at the beginning of the film that some of his "subjects" clearly don't know that this film is attacking religion as an institution. Where I think that Religulous works is that Charles and Maher don't always edit the interviews to make the people look like idiots. More than once Bill Maher is challenged in his beliefs in a way he doesn't respond to. Maybe he can't respond to, I'm not sure.
From the outset, at least, you know why he's doing this; early in the film, Maher explains that he just doesn't understand why reasonable people believe in things he find to be ridiculous (the serpent and the burning bush come up repeatedly). All of the interviews address that in one form or another and once he owns up to what he's doing (or someone knows why he's there) then things get more interesting. It's clear that as he goes along, less people are allowing Maher to "sucker-punch" their religion.
That's not to say that people don't come out looking bad. Muslims get the worst treatment in the film, in a way I found rather offensive. Maher makes it clear he feels Islam is a religion strictly about violence and simply shuts Muslims down when they try to counter his position. I sense he chose people and decided to conduct interviews in such a way that the nuances of Islam are (pun intended) "whitewashed". For Bill Maher to perpetuate the stereotype that all Muslims are violent and their religion is about killing non-Muslims was more than a little tasteless.
His closing monologue is also presumptuous. After doing a survey of things he finds strange (Truck Stop Services, Jews for Jesus, Mormons, Islam, the Vatican, a man who claims to be Jesus reincarnated), Maher launches into a diatribe about how religion is going to be responsible for a nuclear holocaust that kills us, and it's religion's fault because reasonable people are smart enough to make bombs and ruin the environment but too stupid to see things his way. It comes abruptly and undermines the purpose of the rest of the film: to understand religion from and outsider perspective.
In the end, I'm going to recommend it to folks who already watch Real Time. Deeply religious people might find this film to be offensive or just a waste of time. I appreciated that Maher brings many voices to the table, pro and con, and if you've never heard of the Creation Museum you might want to check this out just for that. I studied it a few years ago and it's fascinating in a disturbing way. The Vatican Astronomer seems to agree.
Religulous is worth renting but I'd be hard pressed to call it a "Great" opinion piece, let alone a "documentary". If you feel that religion is a destructive force or that it's ruining the way you live your life, then this movie is for you. For the rest of us, it's interesting but hardly necessary.
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