Scott Harper

  • Drive (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2021) Some films have the flaws of their qualities, and documentary Drive is both fascinating and frustrating for the same reason: While justified by a single good idea (what will happen to the act of driving when cars become automated?), it then goes off driving in all directions at once. Becoming a grab-bag of loosely connected sequences more than a coherent argument, Drive is about disabled people getting the means to drive themselves; celebrities reminiscing about childhood drives; a staunch advocate of human driving; fancy “art cars” showing that they’re more than about getting from point A to point B; a pair of very likable teenagers sharing their feelings as they learn to drive; a short history lesson about the impact of personal mobility in North America; and plenty of other things. I’m not really begrudging the highs of writer-director Scott Harper’s film: Hearing Jully Black belt out an impromptu acapella cover of Gary Numan’s “Cars” is an unqualified delight. But somewhere along the way, Drive seems to lose itself in a meander of sidestreets. The journey is clearly more important than the intention at the onset of the trip, because a good chunk of Drive could exist without any mention of its starting doubts about driving automation. Is that a problem? Well, it could be if you were still hankering for a sustained argument around the consequences of automated driving. (And preferably one that goes beyond knee-jerk nostalgia and rote techno-skepticism — Drive isn’t really interested in what automated driving means beyond not handling the wheel.)  As it is, it does feel like a bait-and-switch from a clear compelling premise to whatever the filmmakers accumulated during shooting. Its success will clearly hinge on whether you’re willing to stay on-board once it starts taking detours.

  • You’re Soaking in It (2017)

    You’re Soaking in It (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2020) There’s something deeply ironic and maybe even surreal in watching a documentary about the state-of-the-art in advertising on TV, and it being interrupted by low-end commercials. The cheap come-ons look almost laughable compared to the insidious techniques described in You’re Soaking in It. Making copious references to Mad Men and the early era of mass advertising, this is a documentary that sums up a lot of scattered thinking about the modern approach to selling things. As the world has moved away from monolithic audiences and gathering spaces, so has advertising—in one of the best sequences of the documentary, we’re told how advertising on the web now targets you and only you, running auctions to determine which advertisement will earn a spot in the commercial spot of the page you’re requesting. “Mad men have been replaced by math men,” says the film. But advertising can take even more diffuse forms as well, and one of the film’s most uncomfortable moments comes when it chats with a YouTuber who seems oblivious to the way her “authentic” channel has been coopted like a cheap billboard. I don’t think there’s anything in You’re Soaking in It that isn’t already well known or well discussed—if you’ve been paying attention. But there’s considerable value in it being brought together in a coherent whole, and a consideration of the various side issues that come with it. (I wish that writer-director Scott Harper would have highlighted that one of the weaknesses of all-pervasive advertisement infrastructure is that it is unusually weak to being blocked—but we do get discussion of the infrastructure and discussion of the blocking, so that’s not bad.) There is even a sobering climax to the film in which the advertisers themselves ponder if what they’re doing is really working: despite an incredibly sophisticated arms race between individuals and those trying to chip away at that individuality by convincing them to take specific actions, such as buying products or voting for an individual, individuals are becoming more sophisticated as well, and able to resist yesterday’s come-on even as tomorrow’s pitches are being developed. Documentaries such as You’re Soaking in It are a welcome addition to that awareness and capacity to resist.