I was very excited to see this documentary when I first saw the trailer for it. It tells the story of lightning and people who have been hit by lightning and how it changes them. Visually it looked stunning with lots of dark landscapes punctuated by bursts of bright bolts. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal does a wonderful job of showing mother nature at her most shocking and surprising (sorry for the pun).
Through the film we meet several people who have survived direct strikes or who were in groups of people that were hit and they are some of the few survivors while their friends perished. There is an interesting existential question asked here about why each person was hit and whether there's a greater meaning to the experience. We see some artists, including Paul Auster (OK - writer, artist - whatever), who talk about how the electric experience help to shape who they are today.
Unfortunately the structure of the movie is rather loose and episodic, so it gets rather boring as we move from one story of a lightning strike to another, to another, to another. There should be more big-scale form to the film that might make it more interesting. Lots of credit should got to cinematographer Nick de Pencier for the beautiful images, but, alas, that's about all that works well here.
Stars: 1.5 of 4 stars
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