At the request of a friend I watched a movie named Zeitgeist, a strange indie movie about a conspiracy theory... or something.
It starts off as a mix between 2001, only without HAL, and Naqoyqatsi, only without the excellent music and visuals. The music in Zeitgeist sounds like something made by a dude who does music for bad porn movies. In his spare time. The visuals look like something done by a Comp Sci. student while learning about computer graphics. For an assignment. Which he did while he was high.
The wierd crap and random chunks of video having explosions goes on for an uncomfortably long time. You feel kind of embarrassed for the filmmakers, a feeling which only grows when you see how self-important the film is attempting to be. Like an old Tool song, they have a comedian making jokes about God or something. Like the Tool song, the comedian is not very funny. At this point I was considering switching the movie off. Then something changed.
There was a voice-over.
Not just any voice-over, but one by a man who completely fit my image of a nutcase. I settled in for a good time. This guy would talk quickly and listlessly, like everything he was saying was completely obvious, and he would not pause for breath. Even though we never see his face, I imagine that he never blinked during the recording. While he was talking, I was engaged. When he wasn’t, I really wanted to switch the damn thing off.
The movie is split into three parts, which, since watching The Prestige recently, I’m going to call “The Pledge”, “The Turn” and “The Prestige”. In actual fact I’m being far too dramatic, and the three parts have nothing to do with one another. You can count them as three separate arguements which do not build upon one another in any significant way. Actually screw that, let’s just go with parts 1, 2, and 3.
Part 1 talks about religion. The nutcase notes the similarities between religions throughout history, and how they are related to the basic astrology / astronomy. Some chunks we all know (The “Son” == The “Sun”, death and rebirth is tied to the seasons, etc.) some chunks made sense when they were mentioned, and some were genuinely interesting. The bible is a pretty interesting story. The problem here is that the nutcase tries to overreach a little here and brings in Krishna as a character similar to Jesus. This is.. err.. bullshit. Part of the problem here is that the same character of Krishna is used in multiple religions, and each has a different back-story (some may have been adapted to be more Jesus-like). However, the claims being made about Krishna are:
When you google Krishna’s Mother all you find are links to random nutcase website. I’m guessing that even if Krishna was born of a virgin, it musn’t have been that important. Googling for “resurrection” also gets the same kind of nutcase sites. The link is tenuous at best, and the characters of Jesus and Krishna are completely different (Krishna was a complete prick, for example). Other gods he mentioned may have had similarly tenuous links.
Anyhow, I’m willing to accept that aspects of religions may have been intermingled, but a good theory as to what happened here is not explained, merely the similarities. Not much of this matters, however, because his point is pretty simple: There was no Jesus.
Shock.
Part 2 is where things get... nutty. Nutcase puts random clips together and waves his hands around and Hey Presto! the government planned 9/11. The reason I don’t buy this is simple: It’s a conclusion borne of necessity. Nutcase wants to believe it’s true so he can make bold statements in Part 3. It also “fits so well” he doesn’t bother to actually make a strong arguement here. He also makes some nutty points which only weaken what he’s trying to say overall.
For example, he claims that the towers were brought down in a controlled manner through explosives put into the building. The problem with this is that someone needs to put explosives into a building where people are working, possibly having to break down walls so he can get to the load bearing members. Was there a significant amount of work being done on the building (say, “elevator repair”, where the nefarious elevator repairers are actually planting explosives)? It would’ve been too strong a point not to mention, so I guess the explosives must’ve gotten there by magic.
Also, let’s say two guys did this. These guys would likely be building demolition experts as opposed to actors who can pretend they’re elevator repairmen, or people who have a hope of taking over the world. These guys have got to be feeling pretty bad after killing a few thousand people. Where are they? I mean, all you gotta do is find a couple of demo guys who suddenly got a lot richer, or deader, or went to India to find Jesus.
Finally, if whoever did this didn’t care about people dying, why even bother with a controlled explosion? Just let the building fall on it’s own. Hell, even if the buildings don’t fall, it’s still 9/11. You’d still get whatever you wanted out of it. So it’s a dumb theory. There are a bunch of dumb theories in Part 2, all of which aren’t really taken to their conclusion, just noting similarities like all good nutcases.
Part 3 is about economics. It talks about the reserve bank and how it’s evil, and the people who control it are evil. You know how people say “where does that hour go in daylight savings?”. It’s the same kind of thing but with economics. The claims here are bold to the point of scary. The nutcase is free here, hoping to have hooked you with reasonableness from part 1, and having shocked you in part two. I guess this part of the movie really is “the Prestige”, where he freaks the fuck out, and encourages you to freak out as well. The movie then goes on to be self-important again and ends.
I don’t deny that some people with a lot of money are total fuck-tards. However, Bob who works at the reserve bank isn’t in on some conspiracy to take all my money. The movie is all “Conclusion” with little to no “aim”, “method”, or “results”. He convinces you that “they” are trying to keep you down, and continues with “everyone is great” (with the exception of “them”, of course). He sounds like a guy I knew in High school who would make up stories to try and pick up girls. He was a nutcase. You know who else was a nutcase?
Hitler!