Written, directed and animated by Academy Award-winning filmmaker and cartoonist Bruce Petty, Global haywire is a wholly original approach to one of the most important questions of our time. Why have we reached the present crisis point between East and West? Petty gathers a committee of real and animated figures to investigate. Evidence is heard from students and luminaries such as Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and Robert Fisk. A wealth of archival footage and issues from globalisation to diminishing oil reserves and terrorism are thrown into this animated mixing pot. "It's all beginning to look like a mad cartoon," says one character. Petty's brilliant satirical creation suggests that madness is indeed at the heart of our global situation, and takes just a touch of visual mayhem to put the point across.
Special Agent Matti
The gist of Global haywire is that those who do not know their history are not only doomed to repeat it but they're making it worse. General greed doesn't make life any better, either.
This is the good part of the film. The bad part is that it goes on and on and on. Cutting 19 minutes off the running time would improve things no end. You can put this in the list of social issue films that are hitting the screens in this newly-conscious era (eg The Corporation, Bus 174 (Ônibus 174)). It is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, after all.
Some of you dear readers might find Global haywire to be a bit left wing.
The Australia, documentary movie Global haywire is directed by Bruce Petty and stars Robyn Nevin, Barry Otto, Gore Vidal.
M (Contains some disturbing images)
80 minutes (1:20 hours)
Film: 10 April 2008
