Coming to theatres today, Friday, November 28: THE IMMORTALISTS
David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg’s portrait of the fight against mortality had its premiere at SXSW this Spring. It went on to screen at Hot Docs, Mill Valley, Philadelphia, Portland, London, Denver, and Sydney Underground.
Unwilling to accept that death is inevitable, the two scientists profiled in Alvarado and Sussberg’s film, Brit Aubrey De Grey and American Bill Andrews, have devoted their professional careers to researching and combatting the aging process. While contrasting figures in approach and appearance, they both make for camera-friendly, if ultimately somewhat irksome, documentary subjects – with their peculiarities unfortunately too often trumping the more intriguing science. Sporting an exaggerated, showy beard, de Grey is an eccentric mad professor type who has cultivated a forced profundity that grows tiresome. He’s also a polyamorous nudist with a much older wife and a frail mother – the latter details primarily introduced to provide personal motivation for his war against senescence, with the former more simply offering evidence of his quirkiness – or perhaps foreshadowing a full turn to a developing cult of personality. The far more straitlaced Andrews is instead excessively represented through his obsession with marathon running, which is putting stress on his and his wife’s bodies as they age. For a point of poignancy and additional incentive, his research partner and friend is diagnosed with cancer. de Grey and Andrews do spend a little time explaining their theories, but Alvarado and Sussberg seem willing to gloss over the curious fact that they take opposing views on the same mechanism at the heart of the aging process. Additionally, aside from a brief debate between de Grey and an Oxford professor that touches on larger issues around immortality – overpopulation, limited resources, etc – the filmmakers generally allow their subjects to sidestep these thorny concerns. While the film has found a couple of curious characters with supposedly unorthodox ideas, it unfortunately fails to fully explore the content – or potential – of their crusade.
what (not) to doc 