Before catching M. Night Shymalan’s Signs recently, I can’t say that I’d ever given much thought to the phenomenon of crop circles. I’d heard of these intricately designed (and often stunningly beautiful) patterns that mysteriously appeared in fields across the globe, and a few of the theories surrounding their origins (extra-terrestrials, clever pranksters, etc.), but I’d never really taken the time to examine them in any kind of detail. Essentially, I wrote them off as one of those great mysteries of life.

Filmmaker William Gazecki (who received an Oscar nomination for his documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement) isn’t content to view them as simply another unsolved mystery, as his latest film Crop Circles: The Quest for Truth adequately demonstrates.

Going in to Crop Circles, I was a little skeptical. Coming on the heels of Signs, it was easy to imagine this movie being made to cash in on the buzz for crop circles created by that film (which, honestly, never really came to fruition anyway). However, Gazecki spent several years working on this film and that, coupled the earnestness of the presentation, all but precludes this film from being a gimmick to rake in a few bucks.

Instead, Crop Circles is a very somber and serious (if often amazingly one-sided) examination of a phenomenon that would be right at home on an episode of The X-Files. Gazecki travels the globe, speaking to mathematicians, metaphysicists, historians, and other would be researchers who are studying these strange formations. Each offers up countless theories about the origins of the circles, as well as arguing that they simply couldn’t be man-made because the geometry involved is so exact.

It’s in these moments (particularly when the film uses graphical images superimposed over the aerial photographs of the crop circles to detail just how geometrically advanced many of the designs are) that the film makes its most compelling arguments. While the initial circles that appeared a few decades ago could have been done easily enough by a few people, the more geometrically advanced ones of recent years seem almost too perfect to have been created by humans—and certainly weren’t made by a bunch of drunken frat boys on a Saturday night.

However, just because the circles seem perfect doesn’t preclude them from being man-made. In fact, several people have come forward over the years to admit to creating crop circles. Unfortunately, Gazecki seems uninterested in even entertaining the notion that the circles could be a hoax. His quest for truth is a rigidly one-sided affair. The interview subjects (while all seeming credible—there’s not a single person in the film who looks like an out-and-out crackpot) are all of the opinion that crop circles are something beyond human creation and understanding. Gazecki never offers up any sort of counter opinion from the scientific community, never mentions the fact that several people have admitted to creating the circles, or even acknowledges that there’s another viewpoint to the issue. In this regard, the film becomes almost iconic—which is a shame, because Gazecki is a gifted filmmaker who could have certainly made an even more compelling film if he’d given equal airtime to some of the naysayers.

Still, even in spite of this serious flaw, Crop Circles remains compelling viewing. It would have been easy to fall into the trap of making a pure propaganda piece (with all the hokey earmarkings of an episode of Leonard Nimoy’s old paranormal series In Search Of), but Gazecki deftly navigates around the majority of the traps laid before him. Yes, the film does get heavy at times (with it’s intricate discussion of mathematical theory in particular), but the director counters these moments with series of breathtaking photographs of the circles themselves. While some of us may be interested in the technical minutiae of these things, the rest of us are simply capable of being awed by the beauty of the end product—Gazecki realizes this and uses it to ensure that he doesn’t lose his audience when things get dense.

Ultimately, calling Crop Circles a ‘quest for truth’ is a bit of a misnomer. Only one side of the crop circle debate is actually represented in the film, which makes reaching any kind of truth an even more difficult task than it normally is. However, there’s no denying that Gazecki has a passion for his subject, and that passion more than compensates for the few rough spots littered throughout the documentary. Even if you’ve never given a second thought to the crop circle phenomenon, this film will certainly make you appreciate the amount of work, the planning, and the exacting detail that go into the creation of these designs. Regardless of who or what makes them, there’s really no denying that they’re an amazing creation. It is the circles—not the people who study them—who are the real stars of this film.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening