Fantastic Machine is a documentary about the image and its evolution from pinhole camera to viral digital media. Given the broadness of the remit, it is perhaps unsurprising that the film doesn’t have too much of a central thesis, beyond the wonder and nightmare of the audiovisual arts. Perhaps the most telling moment comes when the then president of Ireland introduces the first screening of television in the country, likening the potential impact of this new technology to the power of a nuclear weapon. This man from another generation, speaking in severe black and white, comes across as a seer. The film touches on the way in which the image is something the medium has always manipulated even whilst purporting to be completely objective. This is represented through a neat edit sequence where the photographers are seen on the other side of a tragic, award-winning photograph. Fantastic Machine is full of these shiny moments, and is relentlessly entertaining, which sometimes seems at odds with the suggestion it is defrocking the superficiality of the image. It would have been lovely to have had something of Barthes, Virilio or even Baudrillard referenced in order to substantiate some of the ideas which are floated. Nevertheless, the film has a cracking and effective edit, and there are enough nuggets in there to keep anyone happy for an hour and a half.
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