2023 Sundance Film Festival: It’d be easy to say that we take technology for granted, with nearly anything and everything we need available at our fingertips, held literally in our hands. We all sort of know where it comes from, but are often more interested in what is coming next than where or even how it all began, let alone its impact on society. Such seems to be the reasoning behind filmmakers Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck‘s latest documentary Fantastic Machine, which traces back the history of the camera and its profound evolution since, becoming the very thing that motivates so much of what we do in our free time (and often our work time, too). Less a deep dive into the mechanics and engineering of how the camera came to be–though there is a fascinating introduction into the first pictures ever taken–Fantastic Machine is more a visceral exploration of what it has done in shaping the world we live in now.
Narrated by Van Aertryck, the film relies much more on imagery than exposition, shifting us through time in both pictures and video, letting us–now conditioned to make judgements on such things–to assess what we see. It’s a smart choice, leaving us to feel whatever it is that arises while experiencing what they have pieced together. That might not seem the best way to make a point, but making a point is not really what Fantastic Machine is all about, though one certainly will come away feeling absolutely something. From old footage of the first images broadcast across the Atlantic to YouTubers hanging out of skyscrapers for Likes, there is a message in what the filmmakers are doing that is undeniably moving.
I imagine there were a lot of tough decisions made in compiling the incredible variety of footage on display here, the film ultimately holding a line that keeps it mostly out of the more dismal areas where it surely could have gone. I say that knowing full well that there are gruesome clips of soldiers documenting what they discovered in Nazi concentration camps. It’s horrific of course, but it’s the only time the film truly explores the darker side of Man’s capacity for evil. That this segment is prefaced with an archival interview with Lena Riefenstahl, who infamously produced propaganda films for Hitler, discussing her groundbreaking techniques that still have influence, makes for an almost shocking transition. And that is where I think Fantastic Machine has its best moments, shifting our perceptions. A moment in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake is another. It’s devastating and rife with complex emotional turmoil that has no release because what we see is both tragic and then from another angle … maybe undefinable. For me, at least.
But there is humor as well, the meant-to-be-discarded outtakes of a member of ISIS trying to say his lines in a recruitment video is genuinely funny until you remember what the video is about, and again, this is what Van Aertryck and Danielson do best, never leveling judgment, only showcasing what a camera has captured. So you sit and you watch like you do every day, marveling at the oddities of our species, and as the film progresses, jumping fast between social media influencers and international news makers and little children sad while watching Simba’s father die, it becomes clear that the camera is arguably one of the most important inventions in human history. It can show the insides of our brains, how to survive falling through thin ice, preserve our portraits in school yearbooks, entertain us in our living rooms, and also just how small we are in the limitless expanse of space. As Van Aertryck says, the camera saves what’s in front of it. Now what to do with this possibility?