I just got glasses for the first time ever during the beginning of this year, and this documentary has only made my vision feel even more feeble than before. Thanks, Theo.
Technology is the new world, the new perspective, the new “see”. All Light, Everywhere suggests we aren’t just recapturing our world with cameras, but creating a new one in doing so. These new perspectives only then propose new answers yet unfortunately new questions; it can easily lie to us like the eye does but in distinct ways for each that contrast the two, making them additional pieces of distorted yet telling evidential observations that can either aid or quarrel with our desire to understand what can visually be seen.
It’s true that new graphics are only changing the manner in which humans will act, but that is the price of further knowledge. Of course it’s important to still cater to the human eye’s limited power, but nonetheless, corporations and scientists pursue opportunities to reach that closer “story” of objective information, even if there endeavors end up just proposing familiar flaws that may very well lead us back to square one in the lenses own finite ability. There’s no doubt that we seem hesitant to transition into this heavily surveillanced society we‘re suddenly approaching. Seeing beyond the eye truly is frightening, there’s no doubt about it, but we will have to accept its progression for better or worse; it’s unstoppable at this point.
Kind of similar to 1984, huh?
Anyways, it appears as if we must remember that each new perspective is but a desperate attempt on our part to put the worlds together, and even to predict and control the future if possible. Yet, that’s the beauty, curse, and purpose of humanity’s yearn for technological experimentation: as we become more aware of our limitations to understand what we live in, we then become more doubtful of our actions, fostering ourselves to do something about it whether or not it services our experience of moral justice or perhaps simply over-bloats it — we try hard to be like God as the film even implies! Director Theo Anthony has taken us from rich, variant points in history to very present human curiosities in order to reinforce his respectably neutral-minded investigation on the matter, honored by his execution’s appropriate and even occasionally anesthetic b-roll footage that either foreshadows or frustrates history’s trials and failures of discovery primarily through narrated scientific observations or by delving into modern police technology for which we find ourselves controversially dealing with today.
Shoutout to this movie being edited on Premiere Pro, by the way. Adobe gang, where you at?
Verdict: B+
“All Light, Everywhere” is now playing in select theaters.
Burning the Celluloid 
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