Bombarded with images, sounds, and ideas that at times overgeneralizes and in other instances create bizarre connections, Curtis's documentary is deceptive, its true purpose buried in impressive editing and storytelling. This documentary is not actually a documentary, but is a story about how stories take on lives of their own and infect the imaginations of many human beings, especially those whose influence on the world makes the infections all the more dangerous.Flitting from idea to idea, Curtis weaves a narrative by linking somewhat disparate topics and attempts to convince us, the viewers, that his story is true. The world has been manipulated by an elite via computer networks. The idea of a balance in nature contributes to our misguided attempts at understanding nature. We become machines ourselves in the subjugation and erroneous divisions of colonized territories. But ah, these are just stories.Be careful of stories and ideas, Curtis warns, for they have a habit of dictating reality. In presenting us a somewhat plausible explanation of various events in recent history, he presents a story that may or may not be wholly factual, but satisfies that conspiracy theorist lurking underneath us all. The possibility of us accepting a "story" for "fact" is perhaps the essential point of this documentary. So when viewing All Watched Over, be mindful of that you are watching is simply a narrative about how narratives, if taken too religiously, could have terrible consequences.

I agree with a lot of what has been written about this documentary, but I think some people miss the point. The documentary starts out being almost a Terminator inspired sub-title "The rise of the machines" and describes all the evil machines, but at the end the conclusion is *we* are the machines, the our DNA is the program. Viewed in that light, computers are mere extensions of ourselves and in a way are an attempt to make the computational abilities of the brain more perfect. There are still many, many things the organic brain can do better than a computer, subtle things like social intelligence, body language, emotional intelligence. These are more difficult to encode in a computer because they don't follow the same rules as simply adding 1+1. It is clear evidence that we don't exactly understand the process ourselves, which is why we can't program it into a computer.As I watched this documentary, I was floored by the similarities to a audibook I was listening to by the Dalai Lahma which talked about altruism and how it fits into the selfish gene model. Obviously Dalai Lahma takes a very different view on altruism, believing that it represents a higher function of human existence that cannot be explained by Darwinian view of the selfish gene. This documentary takes the counter view that altruism is just another way of preserving the gene, but it stumbles a little bit by only giving altruistic examples where the individual sacrifices itself for the continuation of it's relatives or the destruction of non-relatives. What about altruistic acts which are for the benefit of non-relatives? There is no adequate scientific explanation for this, yet it happens continuously throughout history. Then again, perhaps it is just another form of insanity.In any case, this documentary is not about computers taking over the world, it is about the belief of HUMANS AS MACHINES and this BELIEF taking over the world. Curtis does not go back farther than Ayn Rand and the 1930s, but surely this idea started with Nietszche and Darwin. In fact then Rand said that Aristotle was the only philosopher that influenced her, I found that hard to believe, because her ideas sound very similar to Nietszche's. This struggle is often interpreted politically as right vs left, materialism vs idealism, capitalism vs socialism.When Curtis ventures into the realm of the online world, here too he stumbles, he attempts to show that "cyberspace" was developed to try and imitate the stable natural ecosystem, but in reality was extremely chaotic. Yes, the online world of blogs, email, texts and tweets can be a mess, but if you look at the growth of illegal downloading, this is surprisingly stable, coherent and efficient. This system of peer-to-peer downloading arose completely spontaneously, and has developed into an extremely reliable way of downloading content, which has built in self regulating processes. This is surprisingly similar to the way a natural ecosystem might develop, including the existence of viruses and anti-viruses.Even with all it's flaws, I can't help but be awe-struck by the Herculean and virtuosic editing techniques used by Curtis, and the unique and incredibly moving use of music to juxtapose against various images. It can be cliché to superimpose happy music over tragic images, but Curtis does it such a way that it just seems brilliant. It's like Tarantino meets David Attenborough meets Radiohead. I would be very surprised if Curtis chooses the music himself, it's hard to imagine someone with such a stuffy English accent could be so hip, but appearances can be deceiving.I highly encourage anyone seeing this to watch his other documentaries, they are all done in his trademark style, which is unique and, at least artistically, unmatched in the documentary world.

Adam Curtis' recent documentary series disappointed some. Compared to his work on The Century Of The Self and The Power Of Nightmares, it seemed hodge podge, lacking a central framework idea and bouncing all over the place.After twenty minutes of the first episode, I may have been inclined to agree – the documentary seemed to lack focus and carried over the experimental mix of music and image that had been used so successfully for the interactive theatre piece "It Felt Like A Kiss".However, having seen the full piece, I now beg to differ. If anything, the series is a broader and more satisfying development of areas touched on in his previous pieces, particularly Century Of The Self.As with Curtis' other work, it explores the far reaching and (for the most part) unintended consequences of big ideas. In this case, the idea that nature can be explained and entertainingly presents a series of case studies to explore whether this idea is flawed or not. Unlike his previous pieces, the period under discussion is very recent and the ideas explored so varied that each episode does not really follow a linear timeline and the debates bounce from the 1950s to the 1990s to the 1960s to the present day.This is a powerful and thought provoking piece, Curtis never comes across to me as polemical and seems happier drawing your attention that things may not be quite as they seem rather than hitting you over the head as he proves everything you know is wrong.Everything you know isn't necessarily wrong but it may be that you aren't fully informed of all the facts. The opening sequence may be the the weakest of the series, linking Ayn Rand's ideas of Objectivism to the development of moden computing. However, clever dick that Curtis is, it only becomes apparent with the patience to sit through this that the central character isn't Rand at all but a member of her social circle, Alan Greenspan – who, as chairman of the US Federal Reserve became, through a series of unforeseen events, the most powerful man in the world for a brief period.The subsequent rattle through the economic crises in the Far East in the 90's and the knock on effect to the current economic crisis in the West (and China's part in it) is eye opening to say the least. And it goes on, finding short degrees of separation from a multitude of players on the world stage, linked by the rise and consequences of ideas relating to systems. The second episode then explores the theory of self organising networks through cybernetics, eco politics, the geodesic dome, the 60s counterculture, maximum population growth to the Facebook/Twitter revolutions of the 2000s.I was especially impressed with the final episode exploring the theory of the selfish gene, moving from the initial theory through Anglo- American intervention in the Congo, myths on the origins of the AIDS virus, the Belgians role in the genocide of Rwanda through Richard Dawkins and Dian Fossey.Fascinating stuff and well worth three hours of anyone's time.

I am a fan or Mr. Curtis' previous work but this documentary series was a disappointment for me.The thing I dislike the most is the biased and simple opinion on computers this documentary tries to promote. Apparently "computers" are powerful things that dehumanize our world, we put our faith in computers and they have failed us, completely ignoring the fact that computers are human made, human programmed and human controlled in every aspects. I expected a much more complex and realistic dissection of the topic.This idea is also poorly presented and motivated, for example when briefly talking about the internet, we are presented with the negative opinion of an early internet user, the scene is made in such a way as to suggest that indeed the internet is what that distressed user says. Similar to the cheap techniques a News program would use to influence the public opinion.Throughout the documentary I had the feeling that too much emphasis is put on the soundtrack and on the synchronizing of suggestive footage with music rather than actual relevant content and information.To summarize, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" is tendentious, the idea presented is overly simplified and biased. It gave me the impression it was a bad propaganda movie against computers.