Some of them certainly are, though I got the impression that the author might not understand Curtis or his work to any real degree. Characterizing him as a potential conservative (for effect)? whilst also noting his Graeber quote struck me as odd – identifying 1960s counterculture as a source of ideas with lasting damage is rather popular with leftist discourse in his particular generation/ stripe of leftism.
That, and as you write: they’re art films; being frustrated as the author was for their lack of clarity or specificity as if they should’ve been straight documentaries is silly. If anything, many documentaries engage in a false determinism where their chosen subject matter is 100% consequential in the slice of history they’re exploring – something Curtis’ work doesn’t do by instead leaving the totality of recent history as a paradoxically more accurate haze of loosely connected events with unknowable detail.
The author takes on a ridiculing tone, painting Curtis as having big ideas but being too naive and infantile to actually develop them, a 16 year old raging at the shadowy elites, it's the system man, puts on RATM. That's the whole content of the critique, especially the first 3/4.
Which is fine, I can see that. And yet. Curtis _does_ have big ideas, just chooses to develop them in an impressionistic manner. He's an artist in a way, a polemicist maybe, philosopher certainly.
The writer is (for now) facing one of his betters, yet intuitively senses something is off, awash in a slight sense of superiority. The way this usually arises is because he's likely saturated by Curtis work, and has "cracked the code", the stylistic choices, the narrative structure. The veil has fallen, and now, as a God, he only sees the void. But that's because he's fully internalized Curtis' message, there's nothing new for him there anymore.
That, and as you write: they’re art films; being frustrated as the author was for their lack of clarity or specificity as if they should’ve been straight documentaries is silly. If anything, many documentaries engage in a false determinism where their chosen subject matter is 100% consequential in the slice of history they’re exploring – something Curtis’ work doesn’t do by instead leaving the totality of recent history as a paradoxically more accurate haze of loosely connected events with unknowable detail.