Alex Gibney's documentary "Musk," which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is set for theatrical release on October 16, presents a broad examination of the South African business magnate. While the film is lengthy at 225 minutes, director Gibney, known for pop documentaries, crafts a work that remains watchable despite its subject's often off-putting persona.
The documentary largely covers information already in the public sphere regarding Elon Musk's business dealings and influence on American politics. However, the cumulative effect of seeing these elements presented together can be unsettling. Gibney and editor Michael J. Palmer are credited with assembling a documentary that, while lacking in novel revelations, avoids being boring. The film attempts a balanced approach, acknowledging Musk's achievements in electric cars and space exploration before delving into criticisms of his more troubling ventures and views. This approach seeks to address the film's opening question: how so many are captivated by a figure with a seemingly uncharismatic public presence.
Musk himself declined to be interviewed for the film, including an early instance where he rejected Gibney's request via Twitter. Undeterred, Gibney's team created a digital avatar of the SpaceX CEO. This avatar, described as having an "uncanny ugliness" and resembling a character trapped in an arcade game, speaks lines compiled from Musk's public statements. This creative choice serves as a thematic parallel to Musk's public fascination with artificial intelligence and the concept of simulated reality. The approach draws a parallel to Rodney Ascher's "A Glitch in the Matrix," though Gibney dedicates less time to individual conspiracy theories.
The film traces Musk's early career, beginning with his successes as an investor rather than an inventor, illustrating a pattern of acquiring and restructuring companies. The initial portion of the documentary offers nuance, including paternal backstory that provides some context for his behavior. The film later shifts to explore the reasons behind Musk's more peculiar public actions, incorporating interviews with former partners and women with whom he has fathered children.
While Gibney has a history of deconstructing influential figures and fanaticism in works like "Going Clear" and "The Inventor," "Musk" does not feel as exacting or comprehensive as those earlier films, despite its extensive runtime. The movie reconstructs Musk's ascent to billionaire status, touching upon incidents involving self-driving car fatalities and his interactions with political figures like former U.S. President Donald Trump. Interviews with associates, former colleagues, and tech journalists fill the void left by Musk's absence, though the digital avatar adds little beyond visual texture.
The documentary's attempts to dramatize key decisions in Musk's life with video game aesthetics are noted as detracting from the film, being overly long and lacking modulation. This directorial choice hinders the film from being more provocative or subversive. Gibney incorporates absurdist humor to offset the unpleasantness associated with his subject's public persona. Nevertheless, as a narrative about a significant figure in the modern world, the film's emotional and intellectual grounding is often unstable. It relies on existing footage, including appearances on "The Simpsons" and in "Iron Man 2," as well as segments from commentators like John Oliver and Hasan Piker, to convey complex or evolving viewpoints concisely. While utilizing various sources is acceptable, these clips suggest that Musk's story has been told more coherently elsewhere.
"Musk" is characterized as a film that reassembles existing ideas into a marketable product, a challenging feat given the difficulty in engaging audiences with a four-hour profile of someone perceived as a "vapid, awkward huckster with a white supremacist streak." The documentary rarely delves deeply into the issues it raises, focusing instead on Musk's public perception. The review concludes that Gibney's expansive documentary is unlikely to significantly impact Musk's enduring legacy.