Just got back from the Nuart (word up LA!) where I saw Derrida. For fairness, I must disclose that my entire family is french, I speak fluently, but I have lived here since i was 6, and everybody considers me an american. So onto the review.<br /><br />What a crummy flic. The movie follows the life of Jacques Derrida, the father of Deconstructionist philosophy. Well, in good documentaries, you get to see all sides of an issue, in fact usually you have an issue presented. In The Trials of Henry Kissinger (caught that at Nuart 2 weeks ago) they have Al Haig being cut to Chris Hitchens cut to Kissinger cut to the Chilean ambassador. Now obviously, the filmaker is going to try to make you lean one way in your decicion, but you still get to make a decision, you feel that you've been informed on all sides and get to choose an appropriate belief in some idea that the movie is about.<br /><br />Not so here. For a movie about a philospher, no other philospher is interviewed at all. Critics? Do they exist? If you dont know Deconstruction before you go in, you wont know a thing about it when you leave.<br /><br />The director wasted Derrida's time and her backer's money. The footage seems to have been taken over many many years (I write this November 8, 2002, and Derrida is seen hearing reports of the Rwanda massacres - I believe those were in 1994) is so raw as to be terrible. I think that the director/producers thought that they could stick a camera on this guy and edit it to a documentary. There is no research whatsoever. There are no critics of deconstruction (there are many many out there). The questions she (the director) asks are pitful and stupid and what I expect a student would ask, when put on the spot.<br /><br />The only interesting question (and it put derrida on the spot) was asked by some random voice offscreen (which philospher would derrida like to have had as his mom).<br /><br />I had many problems with the 'comedy' of this picture. People laughed a lot, at times and things I thought wern't funny at all but the editor/director framed to be. The director's accent is so bad that derrida couldn't understand whether she was asking about l'amour or l'amort. Reading that, you can see how he would be confused and would keep asking her which one. but the english subtitles say "love and death" over and over, so people dont get his confusion. seems trivial, but they kept doing this. and people kept laughing when<br /><br />The absolute worst parts of the movie are random shots with voiceovers reading from derrida's work. they are horrendous. what happened to the director's producers? How could they let her put these in? example: one of them is a zoomed in view (on dv) of hebrew tombs. but you can only see a few letters at a time and the camera shifts like crazy up and down, tombstone to tombstone. it is so distracting you have to close your eyes to focus on the v/o (which are very difficult to understand in the first place - very very very VERY difficult). This happens over and over with these voice overs. The director had to fill a lot of time. I mean, there are long shots of a fax machine, shot up close. of derrida's cat (no idea why).<br /><br />And I dont want to hear how this was about him and not deconstruction. you learn nothing about the guy. He's secretive? than ask other people. doing some flippin' research.<br /><br />i voted and gave it a 3