Documentary Review: ‘In Bright Axiom’

Film Review By L.C. Cragg

This film takes audiences on an authentic docu-fantasy emotional journey which acknowledges the importance and joy created by feeding curious souls.

The film takes the viewer on a journey into a “secret” group of people whose purpose is to provide people with not only positive experiences and positive emotional experiences, through extremely creative and mind expanding individual and group events. The journeys are truly innovative, and creative delivering extra-temporal experiences which brush with the intangible creating a group of renewed alchemists.

Director Spencer McCall’s inciteful, spiritual and engaging visual cinematography is authentic and unique in contrast to documentary films formats that can become all “talking heads only” film experiences. The storyline adeptly slips between fantasy and realities of the society’s criticism and well-balanced perspectives.

This documentary also achieves the trifecta requirements of all great documentary films, a unique journey, an emotional response, and changes the way a viewer sees the world.

This trifecta includes taking the viewer somewhere they couldn’t go on the their own, in this case, into the House of Latitude where participants encouraged to expand their notion of reality. The second requirement is that the viewer experiences an emotional response to the experience. This film delivers emotional responses of curiosity, anxiety, joy, and faith in the context of having watched truly positive creative experiences. And finally, after viewing the film you need to will be changed in some way based on what you have experienced. After viewing this film, you will question your own notions of reality. In Bright Axiom delivers on all these criteria with an accomplished flow of storytelling.

As with any counter culture type society, questions emerge surrounding cultism, religion, and economics. The film addresses these issues without destroying the exquisite creative experience of the film. As a viewer, I felt as if I was actually experiencing an actual “latitude event”.

McCall also effectively uses third wall techniques, which is a kudo to his filmmaking ability, without spoiling any of this wonderful cinematic experience. At the end of the film with a climax of a town hall meeting, the filming felt rushed, but perhaps the fate of the society was also being rushed to its ultimate course.

I suggest you watch the film with an open mind and a sense of curiosity, which will make you wish you had a Latitude society experience of your own.