★★★½           By Z.P. Kibbleworth               October 9, 2089

Dig, if you will, the picture of what a typical documentary film looks like. You might picture narration and archival footage, some interviews with experts in the subject the film is focusing on, and any original footage included in the film to be such that the filmmaker is trying to make themselves disappear, only documenting the occurrences in front of them as a silent, powerless observer. This is the style a documentary film usually takes up. Then there’s Dr. Namaste, a film in which there is a scene where the filmmaker literally uses the camera to bash against the head of a police officer as it is rolling, with some of the blood that comes out of the officer’s forehead staining the lens for the remainder of the scene. This moment, which occurs about thirty minutes into the film and is hardly among the craziest things to happen in it, is the perfect metaphor for everything this film is and represents.

To those who follow closely the world of documentary cinema, this is probably not all that surprising. Dr. Namaste is the work of the notorious documentarian who refers to himself as Jacques the Coyote, and has for the entirety of his still young career flouted any notions of proper filmmaking procedure or etiquette. His first film, The Ballad of Fatty Moistlegs, is taken over so much by petty arguments between him and his interview subjects that it fails to tell any kind of coherent story. He gained fame through a sequence in his 2083 film Look at This Dude 😔 (the emoji is a part of the title) in which he tricks a couple into boarding him for the night by lying about being a homeless refugee, then with his camera rolling uninvitedly bursts in on them engaging in woodchuck-themed sexual roleplay. He responds to their anger at him by secretly installing a remote camera in their bathroom and including in the film a five-minute montage of the husband making peculiar squealing noises when he defecates. He then remixed this footage into a hit single and a music video that won six VMAs and was referenced by President Vonkermoose in his State of the Union address. Jacques the Coyote has never been one to make a film according to social standards.

But Dr. Namaste takes this irreverence to an entirely new level. Irreverence is not even the right word anymore; anarchy is probably more accurate. The film’s title refers to the trade name of Braden Abberlander, the man most responsible for the widespread epidemic of erotiselenite, colloquially known as moon meth. He was the first one to recognize the substance’s narcotic potential when it was discovered by lunar geologists and bought large swaths of land on the moon to effectively create a monopoly on the substance before there was even a demand for it. As such, once he began distributing moon meth on Earth and got the planet hooked on it, he could manipulate the market for the drug entirely to his will, and became tremendously wealthy doing so. Over the past decade, Dr. Namaste has lived on the moon as part tech bro trillionaire, part mob boss, with about as many government agents in his checkbook, and as his customers, as exist stationed on the moon altogether. This is where Jacques the Coyote comes in, beginning the film by explaining to the audience his plan of getting inside Dr. Namaste’s inner circle by promising to make a documentary espousing his genius, gathering evidence of his various wrongdoings (with a particular emphasis on a Martian vulture poodle Jacques claims Dr. Namaste stole from his sister-in-law), and then using that evidence to make the government lock him up. The plan is to unveil his master plan to Dr. Namaste through a musical theater production he will secretly have a cast of Venusian strippers execute at Dr. Namaste’s birthday party (because nothing can ever be simple with this man).

What becomes apparent, though, as Jacques actually goes about implementing this ludicrous scheme, is that his motives are not as righteous as he might claim. While he tells us this is all in the name of bringing down a fraternity trillionaire on a power trip and recovering his sister-in-law’s vulture poodle, he leans into his antic disposition hard enough to make us question if he actually enjoys playing as Dr. Namaste’s propagandist. He makes a big show to Dr. Namaste of despising any attempts at government regulation, even fighting a police squad sent to stop the public disturbance of him and Dr. Namaste trashing a Jose’s Falafel Emporium. This leads to the scene described above of Jacques bashing the head of a police officer with his camera. He makes unprompted derogatory jokes about Saturnians to Dr. Namaste just to get him laughing. He enjoys all the luxuries of Dr. Namaste’s lifestyle, and all the people one has to step on to achieve that lifestyle, while rationalizing all of it by telling himself his film is a criticism of said lifestyle. What I see is a man who from the start of his career has been fervently anti-establishment, anti-regulation, anti-decorum, who has finally found in one of the most despicable individuals in the solar system a kindred spirit. And so he takes the opportunity to dive into his utopia in Dr. Namaste’s empire, betting his soul on the notion that one is allowed to enjoy partying with the devil so long as they slay the devil by the end of the night.            

That the film is provoking outrage should come as no surprise. We think of documentaries as passive observations of events, and yet here Jacques the Coyote is spurring everything that happens on through his own will. The shortage of moon meth in recent months has stressed dozens of Earthling economies and put the planet in a vulnerable position with a coalition of Galilean moons eager for retribution. The off-the-rails ending of this film gives a lot of insight into what caused that shortage, and Jacques the Coyote is certainly not innocent. In terms of ethics, I do not even know where to begin with this movie. The making of Dr. Namaste may end up causing the deaths of hundreds or thousands (as we see in the film, the death toll of its events is at least five). It has no regard for any boundaries imposed by cinematic convention, morality, or sanity. But I can’t deny that it makes for a most fascinating film. I feel guilty for having enjoyed watching it as much as I did. Whether you can see this film in good conscience, I cannot say. But I can guarantee it will be unlike anything you’ve seen before.