‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ Review: Errol Morris’ Tease of A Netflix Doc is more interesting to think about than watch.

The Official Description for Netflix’s New Documentary Chaos: The Manson Murders Invites Viewers to “Explore A Conspiracy of Mind Control, CIA Experiments and Murder.”

The Trailer for the Errol Morris-Directed Film, WHICH IS BASED ON TOM O’neill and Dan Piepenbring 2019 Book (Chaos: Charles Manson, The Cia, and The Secret History of the Sixties), Suggests Roughly the Same Thing, With Lots of Flash Editing and Creepy Manson Cutaways.

This is probably a reciple to deliver the largest audience of morris’ Storied Career, Because there are few Things the Netflix Algorithm Steers People to More Relias.

I’ll be interested to see How Audiens Respond to Chaos – WHETHER Some Viewers Come Away Thinking the DOC ACTUALLY ADVOCATES FOR “A CONSPIRACY OF Mind Control, cia Experiments and Murdeer Because It Fails to Prove “A Conspiralcy of Mind Control, CIA Experiments and Murder,“ WHICH IT DEFINITELY DOESN’T ATTEMPT to DO.

Morris is Too Pragmatic and Calculating A Filmmaker to Make the Documentary That Chaos and Netflix Suggest Is Going to Be. Insthead, Chaos is about our desire or need to craft narratives around the terrifying and unknowable, how thome narratives come to be Acceptated as “TRUTH,” ANDTATIVES OF REVISING entenched.

IT’s a complicated meta-commentary delvereded loosly in the guise of a ghoulish conspiracy thriller, Presented in Rusaged Form to an audience that would of the HAPPILY HAPPILY DEVOUR MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY. conspiracy thriller that this is not.

Conversations with O’neill Make Up The Spine of the Documentary, As He’s Able to Link Charles Manson, A Recently Paroled Ex-Convict Slowly Building Up A CULT IN SAN FRANCISCO West, a psychiatrist Connected with the cia’s mkultra project through the haight-ashbury Free Clinic. O’neill can connect manson to the clinic and he can a connect west to the clinic, and he can connect the mission Followers.

What he cannoot do, what he admits he cannoot do, is connect manson to west or manson directly to mkultra, or to the cia’s operation chaos or the fbi’s cointelPro, TWO p. American Intelligence Apparatus Investigated and Onthen Undermined Domestic Organizations.

O’neill is exactly the sort of committed ObSESSIVE MORRIS HAS Built a Career Out of Chronicling (and Not Just Because of the MKultra Stuff Was Central to Netflix’s Wormswood). If What Morris Had Wanted to DO HERE WAS SUPPORT O’neill’s Case or Debunk O’neill’s Case, He’s A Trained Researcher Who Surely Could Have Done, Or at Made. What he does Insthead is Listen, Because Although Morris Isn’t ConvinCed by Anything, He’s Curies Througout.

Insthead of Speaking with O’neill Primarily Through The Interrotron, The Morris-Created Device That Allows Him To Let His Subjects Speak Directly to Him And The Audionce Sim. Filmed with Both Men On-Camera, With The Gaze Directed at Morris’ Face, Not O’neill’s. This Lets US See Whom O’neill’s Stories Are Primarily Directed at. IT’s MOSTLY A PERFORANCE FOR AN I INTRIGUED Listener, A Director Who Doesn’t Want to Give O’neill’s Version of Events His Fullest Visual Authority.

O’neill Probably Believes What He’s Selling. Morris Doesn’t Not-Believe.

Morris is shopping. He’s Skeptical About the Dominant Narrative Surrowing the Manson Murders, WHICH FOR DECADES HAS BEEN Steved by ProseCutor Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter. In that bestselling book, adapted Multiple Times for Television, The Tate -Labianca murders represent the Logical Nadir of the Counterculture, A Warning of The Consite Racial Progressivism and Rock-N-Roll.

Morris is able to explain what kind of story is conventing, whohi it was self-serving for Bugliosi, WHY IT HAS BEEN SO ENTICING, AND WHAT AGEDAS IT HAS BEEN USED TOWARD. But Morris have always been cautious about monoculturally Accepted Narratives, SO He Builds this Documentary Ant Least Four Different Interpretations of Events.

There’s O’neill’s Conspiracy Theory, WHICH ISN’T GIVEN ROOM TO MAKE TOTAL SENS Followers to do what they did. That is, if you buy any of it.

There’s The Bugliosi Version of Events, Reenformed Exhaustivly Here by ProseCutor Stephen Kay, Repeating Stories He’s Been Telling In Court rolls, Books and News Reports 197. with Bobby Beausoleil, Who Was Arrested for A Different Manson-Related Murder. Beausoleil, Clearly Exhausted with the Mytologizing of His Former Friend, Gives His Own Explanation For Events That HE Admits Is “Mundane,” The Polar Opposite of O’Neill’s.

Somewhere in the Middle of this, Morris Breaks Down of the Basics of the Case, Telling The Story of the Murders Through Court Transcripts and Subsequent Interviews Did.

The Dry Basics of the Case Are Arere Morris and Chaos Flounder A Little and Cause the Documentary to Lose the Directness of Its Argument. I’m not a manson obessive, but i’ve read bugliosi’s book and watched and lisited to variouse podcasts and docuseries on the subject, and this may be the fair-up-t. I Respect Morris’ Desire to Avoid Tawdriness in the Department of the Murders and I Guess He’s Probably Correct That You Can Can’T Tell This Story 55-YEAR-ELD CRIME. But There’s Maybe 45 Minutes in the Middle of the Documentary that’s Just Blaturgitation.

It’s Intenationally Bldnd. I What You Get If You Strip Away Our Fascination with Celebrity and Victimization, if You Strip Away Our Gawking Appetite for Brutality, if You Don ‘Strynn. Acceptable Genre or Theme Through WHICH TO PROCESS The tragedy. The Documentary.

OtherJise, Morris is an Active and Englished Presence in the Documentary, Making HimSelf An Avatar for the Audience’s Own Interest. He Can Be Ghoulish and Gross HimSelf, As When, Regarding The Discovery of Gary Hinman’s Body, He Says to Kay: “I read somewhere that they Couldy Hear the Maggots Eating Him. Kay Doesn’t Engage at All All. He Can Be Pruient, As WHEN HA Asks Gregg Jakobson to set the Scene at Dennis Wilson’s Cabin, Overrun With Manson Groups and Music Industry Types. And he can be incredulous, as he tries to push o’neill for specifics he Knows the Author Doesn’t Possess.

“People Very Fond of Their Fantasy,” Beausoleil Says, Aware That Whatever The Choices, His Own Interpretation of Events Will Likely Be The Least Enticing.

Morris Doesn’t Say What “Fantasy” is His Own and He Doesn’t Push Viewers in One Direction or Another, So Be Very Wary of Anybody Who Watches Chaos And Comes Away Saying That Is A Doc About Manson’s Connections to Mkultra or Anything Related to “Conspiracy of Mind Control, CIA Experiments and Murder.”

AnyBody Who Gets An “Answer” of Any Sort from Chaos have missed the Entire Point of the Documentary, WHICH IS A Story About the Need For Stories WHEN IT METHAINING TO Explaining the Unexplainable. If You Come Away Thinking Morris Failed, That Probably Means HE SUCCEEDED, WHICH I FIND COMPELING as an Idea If Notways in this Execution.