The good: The individual stories, especially in the first part, are superbly interesting. Many other montage parts are informative, some are mesmerizing to look at and listen to, and the overall feel of the documentary series is almost hypnotic. The issue I have with it though are its generalizations and some of the conclusions and supposed insights, which are sometimes obvious, and sometimes just derived out of flimsy reasoning, derived from somewhat dubious or arbitrary premises.
The individual/collective dichotomy is strained at best, and could be challenged by many alternative arguments in the context of history and sociology. The technology part is interesting, but there is nothing new there. The political commentaries are also standard issue and a bit all over the place. The conspiracies narrative, again, selective and based on certain opinions and aspects, ignoring others, which is the approach in the film overall. That's fine it it is supposed to show only the author's POV, but here it seems to aspire to reveal some deep universal truths, and in that it fails through a faulty - or deliberately tendentious - methodology.
Overall, it's a fascinating series, but I think the author overreached in his ambition to tell a grand narrative that explains everything.
The individual/collective dichotomy is strained at best, and could be challenged by many alternative arguments in the context of history and sociology. The technology part is interesting, but there is nothing new there. The political commentaries are also standard issue and a bit all over the place. The conspiracies narrative, again, selective and based on certain opinions and aspects, ignoring others, which is the approach in the film overall. That's fine it it is supposed to show only the author's POV, but here it seems to aspire to reveal some deep universal truths, and in that it fails through a faulty - or deliberately tendentious - methodology.
Overall, it's a fascinating series, but I think the author overreached in his ambition to tell a grand narrative that explains everything.