Stream It Or Skip It: ‘All Light, Everywhere’ on Hulu, a Heady Doc About Objectivity, Perspective and Police Bodycams

Now on Hulu, All Light, Everywhere is the second feature-length effort by documentary filmmaker Theo Anthony, whose debut, Rat Film, which used his Baltimore hometown’s rat infestation as a springboard to explore the city’s history. All Light may have more in common with Anthony’s 30 for 30 short, Subject to Review, about the use of instant replay in professional tennis; both films analyze ideas about cameras and human perception in philosophical terms. (Anthony’s intellectual wide angles seem like no surprise considering he attended Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School.) Notably, the new doc earned the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Nonfiction Experimentation at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival — now let’s see if that means it’s watchable to the average TV-remote handler.

ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It begins with a lesson in human anatomy: where the ocular nerve connects to the eye is a natural blind spot, but we’re designed to not notice it. That must be problematic in how we perceive the world around us, if not a full-blown fatal flaw, eh? That won’t stop us from trying to make sense of things though, and when you frame it like this, it makes us look like hapless fools. Anyway, next we see researchers outfitting participants with sensitive headgear designed to detect reactions to media content — think A Clockwork Orange but, you know, a lot nicer.

And then, the film’s primary narrative thread is introduced when we see a PR flak named Steve Tuttle giving a tour of the corporate offices and manufacturing floor of a company named Axon, which manufactures tasers, bodycams, drone cams and other law enforcement tools. The place, with its skywalks, glass-and-metal structures and big intimidating opaque-glass “black box” office hovering over the rest of the workspace, looks like something out of a Marvel movie. As of 2018, half of American police departments used bodycams, and 85 percent of them were made by Axon. Upbeat Steve tells us all about the operation, its hand-constructed cams and AI-learning software, and how the bodycams are designed to mimic the human eye, because something like infrared night vision might divorce the truth of what happened in a policing incident from the officer’s perspective.

From there, we see: Baltimore Police Dept. officers in a bodycam training seminar. How the development of the gatling gun in the 19th century contributed to motion-picture technology, and the invention of a pretty much self-explanatory device called a “photographic rifle.” How men once strapped cameras to pigeons to take overhead photographs, and how we now use drones and airplanes to do the same thing. Scenes from a community center in Baltimore, where a very noticeably white man tries to sell his private-company-operated drone-surveillance system as a crime deterrent, as his very noticeably Black audience debates its effectiveness (“Turn the camera around,” says one man, skeptical of the proposal). And several scenes in which Anthony reminds us that we’re watching a movie in which he controls the narrative, which ties right into Axon and the idea that whoever holds the camera delivers the final message.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: All Light, Everywhere is sometimes like the holy intersection of Herzog (think Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World) and Errol Morris’ Interrotron docs (my favorite might be Fast, Cheap and Out of Control).

Performance Worth Watching: If you have a low tolerance for corporate spinspeak, you’ll want to punt Tuttle hard and far, like it’s fourth-and-long from deep in your own territory.

Memorable Dialogue: The Werner Herzog Does the Internet Dream of Itself Award for Loony-Inquisitive Voiceover Narration goes to Keaver Brenai when she says of the Axon corp, “It feels like watching a corporation dream out loud,” and picks up the thread again a few beats later: “From what history does the future dream?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Axon may control the narrative when it comes to police bodycams, but Anthony controls the narrative about Axon controlling the narrative, represented by Steve Tuttle’s corporate tour. So All Light, Everywhere really wrestles with ideas of objectivity vs. subjectivity, namely that the quest for the former inevitably ends up at the latter, because consciousness results in the development of the concept of the former, which is forever corrupted by the inevitability of the latter. I think. A lot of snakes are eating their tails here as ideas are explored perpetually one step further, from Anthony’s cool, calm perspective.

Refreshingly, the film’s cool calmness divorces it from combative politics. Its voiceover narration is flat, almost robotic, and its overall tone is rooted in analytical curiosity. It’s tempting to say that Anthony loses focus — and I know that’s a loose pun of sorts — on the topic at hand, although his tangents meander pointedly, with a playful, almost-bemused look at the old-timey science of photography. One of the more fascinating side trips involves the use of phrenology and composite photographs as tools to identify what a “criminal” looks like — a pursuit that leads directly to eugenics.

The film finds its most human elements in footage of Baltimore residents debating the apparent pragmatism of surveillance tech with ideas rooted in idealism and studies. The more flawed side of human perspectives also manifest in the “spy plane” drone developer’s use of the phrase “god’s-eye view,” followed by his admission that the view from very high up is what he believes his god would be seeing. Occasionally bubbling up from the subtext is the notion that systematic corruption clouds objectivity, and the prime example is Axon, which only offers angles from law enforcement’s perspective. Bodycams seem like an obvious step forward in fair policing, but when the rubber hits the road, they’re more problematic than pragmatic.

Our Call: STREAM IT. All Light, Everywhere is far from a typical documentary, layered and dense with heady fodder, and sometimes resembling a collection of essays about a large — very large — central concept. It eventually gets to a point, though.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.