In the newly released war documentary, “Point and Shoot,” Marshall Curry, the filmmaker, attempts to draw out a complicated discussion by asking the following: Was Matt Van Dyke justified? Van Dyke is an American civilian who wanted to film his back-packing trips around Africa, but turned into a poster boy for the Libyan revolution against Muammar Gaddafi. Curry carefully walks a fine line, bringing to the audience’s attention his doubts about Van Dyke; he asks provocative questions, such as what happened to all the people who thought Van Dyke should have fled Libya after being imprisoned for six months by die-hard Gaddafi supporters. More often than not, though, Curry comes off as someone who is speaking from non expert, flawed personal knowledge as there is not much evidence to substantiate the judgment being passed.
As Van Dyke describes, his journey through the deserts of Libya was an attempt to reconstruct himself as an adventurous roughneck. “People have a perception of how they want themselves to be seen, and that is wonderful,” he refuses to accept. It’s not as much troubling as it should be, because actual violent acts cannot be compared to the games of “Sid Meier’s Civilization”, which Van Dyke appears to enjoy. Van Dyke suggests that matters become a bit more complex when he qualifies some of his more remarkable claims about the Arab spring, claiming, for instance, “I cannot imagine staying at home, watching my friends being killed.” His qualification is a tell-tale sign of many of his assertions.
In “Point and Shoot,” Curry does not literally ask Van Dyke why it was so tempting for him to pick up arms and fight other to be able to answer where his pre-revolutionary ideas pertaining to heroism came from. But these answers still shed much light on his unconventional self-make narrative structure. Although he does spend a lot of time on the sage self make Van Dyke, but not on the savory details. For instance, we don’t know why Van Dyke modified his name and decided to call himself “Max Hunter,” or what was the reason behind his attaching the description “swaggering, egotistical” to his persona.
Also, even if Van Dyke explains his personality before Libya as filled with concerns, we do not hear what drove them. This is, in part, caused by him having, at the very least, one form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Van Dyke is not only very particular, but also neurotically afraid of other people getting harmed. Curry does not insist with Van Dyke on this last assumption, choosing instead to emphasize that Van Dyke has indeed filmed himself riding across portions of Africa on a motorcycle in an attempt to overcome his fears. So Van Dyke informs us of his obsession with the “Lawrence of Arabia”, but not what it is about that movie he admires. He, too, does not clarify how, quite literally, an extremely nervous individual prepares himself to endure dwelling in places that are “grossly unsanitary”, to engage in shooting practice, and to hang out with militant revolutionaries who take great pleasure in mocking him for being an outsider.
Hence “Point and Shoot” feels more like a work of an author rather than a journalist, who has no clue he should be posing additional questions. Curry, with some justification, does not hold Van Dyke to such high standards that he sees him as a tourist contouring for self-worth. But here he also does not extract sufficient structural information from his subject to rationalize his
evolution into the modern day John Rambo. Therefore, while he firmly states that he holds a lot of esteem to his friends who witnessed him grow a cruel beard and fought for his life, one is left to wonder what he is thinking when one of the comrades says he will send Van Dyke home in style, encased in a well constructed coffin, only as a memento for his mother.
Curry’s style in this regard makes even the moviemaking-as-self-fashioning angle that Curry leans hard on throughout ‘Point and Shoot’ appear to be underdeveloped. His contemplating head interviews are used by him to pattern with trademarked simplicity Van Dyke’s first impressions of Gibraltar when he remark, ‘It was how I would have imagined it in a script. It was very picturesque.’ Along with the American soldiers’ asking to be filmed striking tough guy glares while posing heroically with their guns. And best tough guy glares. But Curry does not get his subject to explain to us why he thinks all of these requests are simply the soldiers asking for ideal Facebook poses of them doing what they do, or why he told his Libyan allies whom he had argued with that he wants to be more than just a “cameraman.” Roughly, as an ally puts it, “That is, a soldier who has two hands. Guns and camera.”
Because ‘Point and Shoot’ is not a political documentary but rather a narrative of stories, Van Dyke’s memories of imprisonment are particular disappointing. This scene may be revelatory for us since, as he tries to sum it up by saying, “It absolutely transformed me,” for Van Dyke himself, however these scenes what are represented through imagistic animated flashbacks undoubtedly are not moving. They suggest a stir of emotions without evoking them, emphasizing the POV shots of disembodied hands and the night sky as seen through Van Dyke’s pinhole sized air hole.
Curry lacks the patience needed to understand his subject deeply, which is why “Point and Shoot” does, indeed, feel as rushed as its title suggests.
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