All Light, Everywhere (2021) - Documentary
In 2017, the filmmaker Theo Anthony released “Rat Film,” an improbably poetic, intellectually dazzling, politically astute documentary on the seemingly prosaic topic of rats and their place in the modern urban landscape. “All Light, Everywhere,” Anthony’s new movie, ponders a more abstract, less earthbound array of subjects — the physiology of human vision, the history of photography, the ethics of surveillance — in a similar spirit of open-minded, morally urgent inquiry.
If the connections Anthony draws are sometimes vague and not always persuasive, that may be a risk built into his essayistic, undogmatic approach to reality.
And the attempt to capture reality in moving images happens to be what “All Light, Everywhere” is about. It starts with a quote from William Blake: “As the Eye — such the Object.” In other words, vision determines the shape of what is seen. Rather than a simple picture of reality, the camera selects, frames and interprets, often in the service of power and ideology.
This is especially worrisome when the camera is doing the work of law enforcement. Anthony’s main concern is the use of video and other forms of image-gathering in policing, a practice whose claims of objectivity come under steady, skeptical pressure.
Some of the pressure comes from voice-over narration, written by Anthony and read by Keaver Brenai, that bristles with rhetorical questions (“what future does history dream of?”) and theoretical formulations. The musical score, by Dan Deacon, adds an air of menace and suspense which sometimes overwhelms the images.
RESOURCE: https://memory.is/all-light-everywhere
