Documentary Review

                                                Behind the Curve 

                                               by Daniel J. Clark

                                       Reviewed by Mobeena Hayat

The documentary I watched over the weekend was one titled “Behind the Curve”. I’m not sure why I gravitated towards it but I’m glad I did as it was one of the more interesting documentaries I have watched over the course of my life.

Although I had some prior knowledge about the topic this documentary covers, I went in completely blind and did not know what it was about but the opening scene was a wide shot of a man standing in a field, wearing a black t-shirt that has the words “Flat Earth Army” written in an obnoxiously large font and it set the theme for the entire audience and viewers like myself that wanted to be surprised by the documentary.

The Flat Earth Society are basically a group of individuals that believe the earth is not round; like we have been tricked into believing by NASA and other organizations of similar stature, but in fact flat, like a disk. Although opinions may vary, the more popular theory of theirs is that large dome that covers our (flat) planet, similar to the covers we use over our plates of food. They also believe that the sun and moon are not real and are similar to rotating streetlights that are controlled by the government but the fact is, their most compelling arguments for the sake of their cause are basically the denial of physics as a whole and their degradation of gravity to just “Heavenly Energies”. 

The documentary follows around the self-proclaimed “King of the Flat Earthers”, a man named Mark Sargent who says that the revelation came to him one night like some sort of prophecy and he decided to make it his life mission. From working as a professional gamer to spending 20 years training people in proprietary software, my initial impression of him was “huh, he seems normal enough”. He mentions that he needs to stay grounded and talk normally, not like some heretic, as it would be bad for the society as a whole. None the less it seems that the world ended up seeing them as flat earth heretics either way.

Throughout the documentary, Sargent consistently mentions that he relates very much to the 1998 movie, The Truman Show by Peter Weir as the prime example for the basis of the society. The Truman show basically follows the life of a baby that was adopted by a film studio and put into a giant dome that was large enough to create a false reality for him, from a fake family, to monotonous interactions in his daily life, Truman starts to realize that he is unhappy and wants to see more of the world and is met with challenges from the film studio that are controlling every aspect of the dome and try steering him away from the truth over and over again, until Truman finally escapes.

Although Sargent has not truly discovered any concrete evidence for his theory other than his own hypothesis and misunderstanding of gravity, him and his community of over a million followers now still blindly believe in their cause and all harbor a strong dislike toward Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author and science communicator who was the first person to actually acknowledge the existence of the society and trying to explain gravity to them, though he was met with a lot of discourse, he eventually concluded “It is okay to be a flat-earther as long as you aren’t the head of NASA”. Similarly, the documentary interviews an Astrophysicist, Astronaut, Science Author and a Psychologist to weigh in their opinions about the entire society and it added a pretty interesting dynamic to the documentary as the conversation constantly shifted between contrasting theories, opinions and evidence.

From a one-sided rivalry with Math Powerland, a retired actor, transphobe and flat earth extremist who claims that Sargent is working for the CIA and is not a true believer of the Flat Earth theory, to a kindling romance with flat earth ally and podcast host, Patricia Steere, Mark Sargent is shown to be a pretty busy man who juggles his internet romance and internet feuds. The first main event that the documentary leads to is the Solar eclipse where the flat earth society infiltrated the advertisement boards around the area to recruit more members as the news ridicules the society and questions their theory by asking them to explain the eclipse and the second event is the Flat Earth Convention where Sargent truly realizes the sheer magnitude of followers that his movement has garnered.

Despite the constant conflict between flat and round earthers, the documentary comes to a close with footage of an Astrophysics Convention that is taking place a few blocks down from the Flat Earth event, where a guest speaker speaks about how instead of entertaining them, humans tend to completely ignore those with different beliefs or those who misunderstand certain laws of science. How, instead of hearing them out or trying to educate them, we turn them into outcasts that end up grouping together and turning into a large group of heretics. He mainly speaks about reaching a compromise and accepting others opinions as long as they do not harm you or others. Towards the end we are shown the constant experiments that the society is taking to prove their theory, such as the curvature test and the final note mentions how the society has acquired funding to locate the end of the so-called dome that is Earth.

The documentary heavily relied on music as a main element for setting specific moods throughout, whether it was used ironically with lyrics resonating with a scene that was playing or simply to uplift a montage scene leading to the event. Most of the interviews were set in office environments and the documentary also used scenes from multiple films such as Monty Pythons Life of Brian and The Truman Show as references to certain situations but otherwise a majority of the time the crew was referencing videos from Youtube or just following Mark Sargent around while he met people and spoke to them.

Overall, I felt that the documentary educated me quite a lot about the Society as a whole, whether it was absurd facts about some of their beliefs or the fact that their reach has extended so much that some families now have 3 generations of believers. It was quite interesting and I would strongly recommend it to anyone that wants to enjoy an extremely different perspective of the world that will make you question all that you thought you know for the first 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 35 minutes, which would roughly be around the part of the documentary where the more extreme theories begin to emerge.