Netflix and Six Documentaries

by Pragadeesh Jayachandran
(India)

I am not a Netflix guy. Because I can’t afford it. So I borrowed by brother’s account in order to watch Medici. It’s an absolute marvel.

Lookout for the Pazzi Conspiracy scene. One of the most realistic scenes I’ve seen.

After that, I saw the trailer of ‘Our Planet’, which completely mesmerized me. That’s how I fell in love with Netflix Documentaries.

Below are the 6 Documentaries I really enjoyed watching.

1) Formula 1: Drive to Survive

As an Automobile student, I automatically gravitated towards this documentary.

Since it is produced along with Formula One, the crew was able to capture every behind the race moments. How they prepare their cars, the team behind the cars, the management issues, Ego and pride between the motor companies.

You don’t have to be a Racing Fan to watch this. Even though it is a very random piece, it is stitched beautifully to give you an idea of the whole season. The visuals are great and you’d begin to see racing in a different perspective once you watch this. You’ll look for the politics behind the game.

2) The Social Dilemma

The Social Dilemma is a documentary-drama which shows the hazards of social networks in a documentary along with a story of a family dealing with those issues in a drama format.

Before accusing the social networks of all wrongdoings, let’s understand one thing very clearly.

The software engineers behind the platforms or the MBA graduates formulated this Business plan didn’t create this with evil in their mind.

They designed these platforms to:

A) Establish themselves in the market
B) To earn the big bucks
C) To create something cool for which people would go nuts.

They definitely didn’t think about the social media addiction and the mental depression it is creating.

But What happened? What changed?

The Social Dilemma analyses all these issues and the interviews with the silicon valley techies explains the intensity of it and the potential damage it could make.

Personally I couldn’t comment on it, because I’ve deleted all of my social media accounts three years ago. So when I watch this documentary, it didn’t stir-up my intestines. I felt comfortably safe as I was nowhere near any of them.

But friends of mine who watched this documentary said they were absolutely shocked.

I felt the drama part of the documentary diluted the content of the Documentary. But, since it is a 2 hours long video, people might find it a place to process all those informations.

One important aspect I found in this documentary was, all the silicon valley techies said they don’t allow their children to access these platforms.

Something to chew on Right!!?

3) Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates

When the Director of this Documentary Davis Guggenheim says to Melinda that the name of this Documentary he is shooting is ‘Inside Bill’s Brain’, Melinda laughs out loud instantly saying ‘ It’s Chaos’.

The man who created Windows and gave us an opportunity to look the world through it - Bill Gates.

The 64 years old Former CEO of Microsoft carries a bag of books everywhere he travels and he reads all of them in a timespan where we finish one or two fiction.

Inside Bill’s Brain shows the childhood story of Bill Gates and his relation with his mother.

When Melinda says ‘After marriage Bill wouldn’t be there. In a big house, I’d be there alone with the new born baby’, we can understand her pain.

There are so many subtle things you could understand from this documentary.

Bill Gates also talks about his ‘Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’. His mission of working towards achieving sanitation and heath-care in the third world countries.

‘People die because of Diarrhea’, when Melinda explains her journey you could see the pain through her eyes and the sincere dedication behind those efforts.

The Richest and the most respected couple in the world working on Toilets. Something we all should learn from.

4) Connected

Latif Nasser, a journalist travel across the various parts of the world to show how the things around us are interconnected in this 6 episode brilliant documentary.

The first episode is about ‘Surveillance’, where he talks about the global advancements in surveiling individuals by the respective governments or the private.

A case study of ‘Tinder’ comes up in this episode, where he explains how tinder creates a profile of every individual user from their own data.

Trust me, it gets even creepier.

The documentary moves forward with topics like ‘Poop’, ‘Dust’, ‘ Digits’, ‘Clouds’ and ‘Nukes’.

All of them are wonderfully written and edited.

The way these things are connected around us is just fascinating.

The extent to which they’ve gone to connect these dots. Marvelous effort.

5) The Great Hack

Do you feel that you’ve skewed Democracy?

When a reporter asks the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica Alexander Nix the above question, he replies...

By providing campaign services to a candidate who’d been fairly nominated as the Republican representative of the United States, how is that possible?

Other than his answer, the sincerity in his face while replying to this question shocked me.

The internet has provided such a platform for spreading such mass mis-informations.

Why are we not taught about being ethical? Elections are the most democratic thing. If this is considered a legal campaigning, i don’t think anything’s illegal.

6) Our Planet

I read somewhere that it took 5 years to complete this documentary.

5 years for a documentary. Crazy right?

I won’t say anything else about this documentary. Because this is a must watch.

Go and watch this.