SPOILER-FREE SUMMARY
Businessman, trillionaire and “engineer” Elon Musk has gone from Silicon Valley intern to a top position within the United States government, all by way of charisma, charm and opportunistic relationships. How did an allegedly abused kid in South Africa wind up in California with enough money to start Zip2, which turned into (the original) X.com, which turned into Tesla, which helped fund SpaceX, which helped fuel Starlink and so on. As told by former business partners, exes and industry experts, MUSK tries to peel back the truth on somebody who seems to have used word-of-mouth and technology to have written — and re-written — his own narrative all along the way. In doing so, he rose to prominence and stature all the way to the right-hand side of President Trump.
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
You know that saying “Explain it to me like I’m five”? Well, the best thing I can say about this documentary is that it explains everything to the viewer like they’re five.
Most projects this in depth, and with this much information, can lose the viewer pretty quick unless they’re already an expert in the subject. MUSK manages to do the opposite. The doc discusses government, entrepreneurship, finances, relationships, politics, the psychology of a god complex and artificial intelligence in ways the common person can understand or, at the very least, follow along. That’s the true power of what director Alex Gibney has done here.
MUSK educates the audience on a complicated figure, suggests patterns of behavior, produces receipts for that behavior and talks to those who were there to bring perspective on the domino effect of meeting, working with and leaving their relationship with said complicated figure.
It’s not all rainbows, however. The runtime is a tick shy of four hours, there’s no continuous on-screen disclaimer that the Elon Musk “interview” is AI generated and the backgrounds of (seemingly) every talking head is green screen and comes across like you’re watching an episode of History’s Greatest Mysteries. This subject matter is far too important to be given that kind of sheen.
MUSK is a politically one-sided documentary and, for that reason, the people who need to see it won’t. Three hours into the film, influencer Ashley St. Clair talks about how Musk is viewed from the right one way and from the left another, both negatively at times. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know more about filmmaking than Gibney but I will sit here and tell you, if he wanted more people to see his film, he should’ve opened with that quote.
Confirmation bias is a horribly dangerous frame of mind, regardless of what leanings you’re trying to confirm. Unfortunately, the world we live in accepts it as routine. If you’re conservative, you watch Fox News, if you’re liberal you watch CNN, etc. People just stay in their own bubble and have zero interest in understanding one another. So, to take such an unapologetically slanted view in producing this documentary is certainly an interesting choice, one that undermines the full value of the information being delivered.
Bottom line, everyone needs to watch MUSK. It’s critically important so we can try and stop the seemingly unstoppable infiltration of our everyday lives from one man’s companies, influence and reach. Unfortunately, because Gibney is preaching, the only people who are going to commit to the entire four hours is the choir.
Despite all that, it’s still one of the best documentaries of the year.
JKG SCORE: 7.5 out of 10
