According to Occam's Razor review by The Grim Ringler
According to Occam’s Razor
As public as film is, at the end of the process, it really begins as a personal thing that is shared, expanded, and eventually whored out to anyone in a union or with some manner of money to give to the project. It’s hard when you run into a film that remains, even to a small degree, personal, and it’s damned hard to really figure out what to do with it. Sure, you have to give your review as to whether the film is good, or bad, or both at once, but you also, with any art, need to take into consideration the makers of it. It’s rare that I will take a piece of art to task as I try to keep in mind that someone cared about it. Sometimes that’s not possible and you have to lay the lumber. In this case, director Philippe Mora’s Razor is a hard film to get a grip on. It’s like trying to throw a football covered in grease. Sure, you can do it, but how successful will you be? Well, I shall give it a go.
Presented as a straightforward, if experimental, documentary about his experiences in trying to prove the existence of aliens and abductions by aliens. Mora, in his film, claims to have had several experiences with aliens and, having shot the cult adaptation to the book Communion he has a couple of things to say about how they are perceived. Using archival footage, personal narrative, interviews, and experimental editing Mora hopes to come to grips with his own place in the universe and in the story of whether or not there are extraterrestrials on earth or not. The thing here is that Mora is not playing fair, taking a page from Welles’ F is for Fake and creating a film that will tell you some truth, but not all truth, thus diluting the evidence both for and against and creating a new truth that examines what it really means to believe in something. Mora seems to be both poking fun at and acknowledging the validity of the belief in extraterrestrials, leaving it up to the viewer to decide what is real, what is fake, and what the truth means to them.
This is one strange film. It is presented in a manner that suggests that director Mora has, due to his investigations into this subject, become involved in a world he cannot hope to master, and, in the end, disappears because of this. Gone without a trace. Only, he didn’t disappear as he does commentary for the film. So then, what is the truth, and what isn’t? Some of this can be easily figured out as you can tell some of the people are actors acting, or are being coached. But there are ‘experts’ that seem credible and seem to believe what they are saying. So what you have is a strange mixture that creates a bit of a ‘pseudo-mentary’. This is, as much as anything else, a personal journey for the director, though I can’t say I fully comprehend what he was hoping to learn in the process. Hell, even the commentary plays fast and loose with the truth.
The film isn’t the most technical of wonders, nor is it the greatest as far as editing and narrative, but there is a strange curiosity the film raises in the viewer that holds you to the end. I can’t say that I liked the film, but I was compelled to finish it. I think this is a good film to watch with friends and to then discuss what Mora seems to be saying about us, and the nature of belief in extraterrestrials, that’s how I think the film would work best. As it stands, it seems more like an odd curiosity than a solid film. It’s intriguing, but I can’t say it’s good.
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