[StockHuman]

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.