It is hard for me to imagine that there is a God after viewing a movie like this. Quite possibly the most inert thing I've seen all year.<br /><br />To start, I rushed out to see 'Derrida' after reading Kenneth Turan's Los Angeles Times review praising 'Derrida'. Turan, as a reviewer, is usually quite perceptive; however, in this one I think he missed it. Upon arriving at the theater I was very excited because the two Directors, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman were to be hosting tonight's viewing at the Nuart Theater in West Los Angeles. And from then on began the decent into maelstrom.<br /><br />The movie begins with a taste of hope. Its rough textured video blurring an urban landscape all to the tune of Derrida's ramblings about something. The movie never really takes off from there. It then cuts to what turns out to be its anthem. The mundane and impersonal life of Jacques Derrida. And as I write this I would like to make clear that by all means Jacques Derrida's life is not mundane, nor does he ramble into oblivion. And it would have been nice to see a documentary that suits him, he deserves one.<br /><br />But what make his life or the portrayal of his life completely soulless are directors Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. It seems that the two went into this documentary with absolutely no agenda. The film just goes about showing the man move about the house and speak to classes and friends. Which could work in any normal documentary, but these are the most impersonal moments they could have shown. And somehow they maintained this for five years thinking that they were doing something.<br /><br />In speaking with the two afterwards, which allowed one to see just how pretentious and disillusioned the two exist as, they boasted about how they edited over one hundred hours of footage into an eight-five minute 'piece' as they call it. What baffles me about this is that with all that material what they showed seemed to be such a disservice. Perhaps the only relief is went Derrida speaks freely. But even then the film is minced with cutaways of the directors smearing their signature over it. The most insulting part about the event was that when Dick and Kofman spoke to the audience answering questions, they intellectualized this all. Somehow they all thought there was artistic merit to the lifeless nature of their work; rather than an unintentional defacing and humiliation to Mr. Derrida. But what should he care? Being one of the fathers of Deconstruction, his identity does not exist within Dick and Kofman's deranged portrait.