Austin asked me whether The Phenomenon is worth watching. I said it is the best UFO documentary I have ever seen and I’ve seen all of them. (I haven’t, obviously. But it is impressive enough to be a bit bombastic about it.)
Not that it’s perfect, mind. Nothing ever is. But that brings me to the heading for this review. Making a documentary about UFOs positively defines drinking from a firehose and director James Fox has good technique.
Firstly there is absolutely zero ‘experiencer’ content, which is to say there are no accounts from people ‘abducted by aliens’. (Technically eyewitnesses are experiencers but you know what I mean.) Not that these data aren’t interesting or significant -most of the time I find them more interesting and more significant data than speculating on what various governments may or may not know.
The creative decision has clearly been taken to stick exclusively to official documents and official position statements instead. And I get it. But I just want to flag before I get into a few specific quibbles that it means -in my humble opinion- ‘the phenomenon’ being explored is not the full UFO phenomenon, but the phenomenon of a government lie that increased in cost and complexity from the immediate postwar era to today. Still makes for amazing watching.
Now to the quibbles.
- In the characterisation of the famous Westall encounter which is otherwise explored quite well in the book, the documentary fails to mention that some of the men ‘in military uniform’ who showed up more or less immediately at the school weren’t actually wearing Australian military uniform, but some other country’s. That’s significant if you’re trying to work out who might ‘own’ the very-60s-looking, silvery disc that buzzed the kids and landed in the forest.
- Some of the (remarkable) photos of ‘flying saucers’ from the 60s and 70s shown in the film that I hadn’t seen before look like mid-20th century technology. They may not be, but if not, we are being visited by Austin Powers, baby. Not once -except for a few asides that the interviewees themselves immediately dismiss- is the possibility adequately raised that these are black projects when, at a minimum, we know there were black projects over the whole duration of the Cold War and into today.
There’s a related quibble -the last one- that made me die a little inside. The Phenomenon inevitably swallows the whole Elizondo/tic-tac/front page of The New York Times narrative wholly without criticism. It’s hugely disappointing that a documentary covering the 70 years of provable lies foisted upon the world by (principally) US intelligence agencies about how much they know regarding UFOs then falls for the very same intelligence agencies being up to the same old tricks. Sadly, this seems par for the course today.
However, I think it accidentally contained a ‘tell’ from whoever planned the Elizondo, etc narrative as to why they did it. You see this guy?
Look at that job title. In the film, he says that he was “very disappointed” with the NYT coverage because “it didn’t go far enough” in declaring that these are alien vehicles and that we are not alone and that we are being visited by off-planet species.
The thing is, even if you think the tic-tac and whatever aren’t made by humans, there are at least three other credible interpretations of the footage beyond “we are being visited by aliens”. There are even people in the very same documentary -Jacques Vallee, for instance- who could tell you that. The people interested in forcing a specific off-planet narrative are those looking for a convenient cover story for some devices we’re not allowed to know exist yet. People such as the Department of Defence, where Mellon ‘previously’ worked as an intelligence official. It may very well be literal aliens for once. I have no problem with that read. But when that’s pushed as the only explanation is when we all need to be suspicious of people whose actual job it is is to lie professionally.
Anyway, that’s always been my best guess as to why the TTSA boondoggle and its updated Elizondo version happened in the first place, and The Phenomenon gives me a tiny little factoid to point to to back that up. So thanks!
I want to be clear as we finish up this quick review that that isn’t the main point of the film, nor is it even perhaps the biggest takeaway you’ll get from watching it. Old hands won’t see any new cases but will certainly see fresh material from them. For newer folk, this is a great chance to see a sober exploration of the 70-year-long tale of UFOs and the national security state (to borrow the title of Richard Dolan’s comprehensive writings on the same subject). By the end of it, you really can see how and why the US ended up with $21 trillion in missing money and how government expenditure is now wholly dark, post FASAB 56.
Anyway, with those caveats, this is a strong recommend for a really enjoyable film.