An AI-powered docu-mystery that won't give Werner Herzog sleepless nights

Most films want their audience to suspend disbelief. ‘About a Hero’ would prefer to have it on hand. “Viewers are advised to exercise caution in relying on its visual and auditory components,” reads an on-screen disclaimer at the start of Polish filmmaker Piotr Winiewicz’s irreverent exercise in AI-based storytelling – a deliberately controversial opening film for the this year’s IDFA documentary festival, not least as many wouldn’t classify it as a documentary at all. This seemingly hybrid exercise, which wraps an imagined (and gleefully incoherent) murder mystery around a talking point about artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity, does nothing to reassure viewers that any of its components are more “real” than the others . As a feature-length stunt, it has some humor, but falls short in terms of ideas and arguments.

Still, the flashy conceptual gimmick and big-name participation in “About a Hero” should be enough to turn distributors’ heads as the film makes its way through the docfest circuit — even if the biggest of those names aren’t is really on board. At least not personally. Inspired by Werner Herzog’s statement that “in 4,500 years, a computer won’t make a movie as good as mine,” Winiewicz trained an AI model entirely on the venerable filmmaker’s oeuvre, using both to create a fictional story to write about an unexplained problem. death in a German factory town, and to make a facsimile of Herzog to tell it. The model is called Kaspar (last name Hauser, it is believed) and, like many AI creations, is close to authentic, but eerily skewed in all sorts of particulars – starting with the deeply contrived imitation of those signature husky Herzog tones, which barely register on the level of a party trick impression.

More from Variety

That’s kind of the point: Hardly an exercise in AI advocacy, “About a Hero” seems to revel in its neatness, challenging Herzog’s dismissal while proving him right as a story — not entirely Kaspar’s creation, but modified by Winiewicz from the model’s output – becomes increasingly confused. As such, the film may function less effectively on its own than as a literal conversation starter, either in a festival setting or coupled with a post-screening Q&A session.

Divided into chapters that follow no logical numerical order, the story revolves around an unseen figure: Dorem Clery, an unremarkable worker at a kitchen appliance factory in the fictional German town of Getunkirchenberg, who is found dead in circumstances that, either as a result of vicious game, or a flaw in AI storytelling, never quite make sense. It turns out that he had been working on an enigmatic project called only ‘the Machine’, itself a symbol of the development of AI, and perhaps somehow responsible for his death. The film’s exploration on this front, however, is repeatedly sidetracked by a focus on Clery’s widow Eleonore (Imme Beccard), who channels her grief into interactions with household appliances that ultimately transform into the most literal form of technolust.

“If this is clear, convincing and discernible in your mind, you’ve gone crazy,” squeaks faux-Herzog as Eleonore gets playful with a toaster — not the first time “About a Hero” has deliberately pronounced itself flawed in construction, in an ongoing joke that wears a little thin by the end of the film. (It’s better if Winiewicz lets viewers pick up the errors themselves, as with repeated misspelling of the word “police” in the film’s procedural portions.) On the documentary side of the equation: the film’s interviewees—including Stephen Fry and cultural critic Charles Mudede – offers mostly thoughtful but noncommittal musings on AI, doing little to influence or shape the film’s vague thesis. Eight years ago, Herzog’s documentary “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World” reflected more substantially on humanity’s looming struggle with its own digital innovations, albeit with considerably less metatextual trickery.

“I don’t mind rejecting the idea that people are the be-all and end-all of intelligence,” says Mudede. But ‘About a Hero’ isn’t really concerned with the possibilities of AI as a post-human construct, not least because the filmmakers’ own preoccupations with the technology are vetted and tempered, whether in the name of reason, irony or amusement. . The film is almost certainly more watchable because of that level of human involvement; it is beautifully shot and designed, with a dryly amusing supporting performance from Vicky Krieps as an exhausted reporter investigating the Clery case. But if it is a provocation, it is a winking, cautious provocation, which in its own way reassures viewers that life and art as we know them will continue to exist for a while, if not necessarily 4,500 years.

Best of variety