Doubt yourself and everything around you when watching About a Hero, Piotr Winiewicz’s latest which opened IDFA 2024.
The first scene of Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero is a recording of an answering machine in which Werner Herzog gives permission to use a film of his to train an AI model, Kaspar. It is very clear he does not think AI will make a better film than he could, at least not for 4500 years.
After this, the film takes us to Dorem Clarey’s funeral, who’s mysterious death will be investigated during the rest of the film. Or so it seems. Dorem Clarey is a factory worker who passes away at home. His wife, neighbors and more of his loved ones are at the funeral. Whoever has been to a funeral before, knows humour is a healthy way to make the day a bit easier. In this case, the humour used feels a bit out of place.
After this, the entirety of the film becomes less and less clear. It feels chronological, but I can’t say for certain. The recent widow is being fimed while she is driving on a road through some fields, listening to the news on the radio. The reporter is talking about “the machines”, a re-occuring subject, though it is never clear what is meant by that exactly. I realised I had no idea when this story is taking place and the characters don’t seem like the ones you ususally see in documentaries, they don’t seem real. Based on the appliances and the scenes in the town, I would say this film is mostly taking place in the early 2000’s, in a poor labour town that does not know any luxuries. It feels like the characters are putting on a show and with every new scene, I wondered how we got there. The scenes never feel finished and yet the film moves onto new ones. Besides that, the scenes all look staged, a little too staged. It’s is all just too sterile, perhaps too obvious, like the setting has never actually been lived in and someone has spent hours perfecting the space for this one take.
As the film continues, I start to feel more and more lost. I finally muster up the courage to ask the person sitting next to me if I missed something, and she confirms: she is lost as well. Shortly after, the narrator of the film finally confirms this too: this is intentional.
With this in mind, it became easier to understand nothing had to make complete sense, though it did make the film hard to follow. One of the most important scenes is the one where Dorem Clarey’s wife talks to him through the machines in their home. He speaks a different, non-existing language, but she understands him. Due to the subtitles, we do to. She tells him she’s lonely and after a while, he catches onto what she means. Before you know it, she is having intercourse with their toaster to feel close to him.
As the film moves on, we see scenes in which the actors act and it does not feel like it’s a documentary, rather a regular film. We also see scenes in which one person is being interviewed. One of them is a secretary at the police station reading notes Dorem Clarey apparently left behind, another one is being interviewed in a high-rise office. He looks and sounds like a lawyer. The last person who is being interviewed, Stephen Fry, can be seen in one of the last scenes and he glitches from time to time. While he keeps talking about the toaster scene, the camera zooms in on a few small birds in a puddle of water.
The interviewer sounds neutral, he does not seem to steer the other person in any direction, they rather just keep talking while the audience zones out a bit.
In the very last scene, the audience is promised a clear ending. Before that ending is explained, the film cuts to the credits. This move feels obvious, but perhaps there is no other ending possible.
In the talk with director Piotr Winiewicz and producers Rikke Tambo Andersen and Mads Damsbo, they share that the film is scripted by AI, specifically an earlier version of how we know Chat GPT now. Mads Damsbo put in a one word promt: “something”, which eventually resulted in About a Hero. The goal they had in mind was to let the audience get lost and, I assume, to make the audience think about how far AI has come. I can’t help but think some scenes have not actually been filmed, but rather AI generated. This has not been confirmed.
Both the director and producers have made it very clear finances were a big issue while producing this film. They felt investors did not understand the idea, believe in the idea, or both. I can see why. The entirety seems vague, we now know at least one of the characters is deep faked and there are multiple characters whose face we never saw. As the audience, we are reminded of AI’s evolving in a rapid speed and how easily things can be deep faked or staged. The entire film is meant to not make sense, and neither does this review.
