Albert Nerenberg

  • Who Farted? (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2022) I’m not going to cry bait-and-switch considering that “climate change” is part of the film’s promotional material, but if you’re watching Who Farted? for its title and classification as a documentary, do understand that you’re not going to get an all-flatulent all-comic 90 minutes. It takes five minutes for writer-director-star Albert Nerenberg to take the first of the film’s wild tonal swerves from comedy to dour pessimism: As a classroom listens to a presentation of the science of farting, the question of methane emissions from cow farts gets brought up and announces the film’s main focus on global warming. While Who Farted? has amusing episodes (about the social shaming of farting, the intimacy of couples farting in each other’s presence, the legacy of Le Petomane, the annual Festival of Farts, and the vulgarity of flatulence reminding us of our animal natures), the majority of the film ends up being about global warming—and not the fun sort of global warming discussion: the kind of documentary that gives a segment to someone seriously claiming that humanity will be extinct by 2027, maybe 2026. There are striking images along the way: Nerenberg himself cuts a memorable figure in his omnipresent suit, especially as he walks through flooded streets. My own Gatineau hometown gets a few moments of the film as it examines the aftermath of the 2018 tornadoes that destroyed one of the city’s neighbourhoods. But Who Farted? becomes steadily disconnected from its own starting point as it goes on. Cow farting is revealed to be a smaller source of methane gas than cow burping (now there’s a scoop for you), but then again agriculture is dwarfed by the emissions of the world’s most polluting corporations—an idea almost immediately abandoned in favour of more flatulent material. It’s enough to make you wonder what was the point of the documentary—as if the initial premise that got funding for the film went awry as more facts were uncovered, and all was left was the original pitch even if it didn’t make sense anymore. The result has to be one of the most disappointing documentaries I’ve seen so far on the otherwise solid Documentary Channel: it’s an unstructured, undisciplined mess that feels as if it salvages something out of two grab-bags of unrelated material. The cinematography has its moments (especially through its use of drone cameras) and I like Nerenberg’s presence as a host, but this doesn’t compare favourably to his previous You Are What You Act. There are probably two better movies in Who Farted?, but right now they’re strangling each other to a disappointment.

  • You Are What You Act (2018)

    You Are What You Act (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) A feature-length examination of the old saw “fake it ‘till you make it,” You Are What You Act begins by examining incidents in which actors (actors!) were involved in real high-risk situations and practically became true action heroes at a time when many people would have simply frozen in place. Writer-director Albert Nerenberg uses this as a springboard to an examination of the field of “embodied cognition” – the idea that physical practice, visualization, and role-playing can prepare your body and your mind to be ready for future situations. You Are What You Act’s big crush on Tom Cruise is a bit amusing (seriously – he comes up three or four times during the course of the film), but the point is that Cruise, playing an action hero and often doing his own stunts, is exposing himself to high-risk situations and learning how to react during them. Not that the film stops there – noting the very high prevalence of affairs between on-screen romantic partners, Nerenberg explores whether there are shortcuts to human emotions – if it’s possible to fall in love by telling another that you love them until you both believe it. Midway through the film, there are plenty of ways you can poke holes at its theory – not the least of them being that actors have publicists, but more realistically that acting exercises have been with us for a long time. Almost on cue, that’s when You Are What You Act does become more interesting, by criticizing itself and exploring the history of drama exercises that create rapid emotional intimacy between actors required to fake it until we believe them. It all ends up in a big ball of multidisciplinary ideas thrown in a blender, but hard to dismiss. Nerenberg himself makes for a very likable host, well informed and willing to portray himself as exploring doubts in his own thesis. One tangent I would like to have followed is the idea that expertise stems from repetition driving conscious actions into unconscious reactions – but maybe that’s implicit in the rest of the film. I was, at first, somewhat skeptical about You Are What You Act –Tom Cruise obsession included – but eventually warmed up to the film as it kept re-examining its thesis for flaws or links with other theories. It’s a clever film about a clever topic, and it deserves a look if you have even a passing interest in self-improvement.