SXSW Film Review: Monsters from the Id

In part a genre history of 50's era sci-fi movies, Monsters from the ID promises footage of rickety-looking pre-CGI robots and aliens, along with reels of scenes in which scientists make love to women in high heels and round-collared dresses. For kitsch-seekers, the 50's flashbacks will deliver. However, director David Gargani, has bigger fish to fry, as the movie makes clear when it transitions from a meditation on the cultural factors which influenced the resurgence of sci-fi during this decade into a polemic on the need for Americans to reclaim their past love affair with science and technology—before the rest of the world passes us by.

The second and third acts of Monsters from the Id characterize post-Sputnik America as a place where science was in the news every day, kids made homemade rockets for fun, and every other citizen was fixated on the details of potential outer space colonies. Gargani and his team of experts are convinced that what's needed for national rejuvenation is a significant increase in encouraging kids to be a scientist when they grow up.

This is (obviously) a celebratory argument, which largely ignores all of the critiques of science and technology that the environmental movement and other social justice groups have been advancing for the past 30 years. An example of the whitewashing that big science and Eisenhower's famous military-industrial complex get in this movie is the inclusion of the story of Werner von Braun, a German rocket scientist who defected to the United States at the end of WWII. Von Braun's history as a Nazi weaponry expert was unsavory in spots, and inclusion of that aspect certainly would have made the point that science is not inherently a force for good; none of this makes it into the movie. Instead, we hear only about von Braun's inspirational commitment to the space program.

All right. Ideology aside, the movie deserves a viewing, if only because it features a lot of neat and unusual clips of 50's movies and television, which are always fun, as well as interviews with an awesome physics professor who teaches about basic scientific concepts using sci-fi movies (where was that guy our junior year in high school?)

Monsters from the Id had its world premiere Friday, Mrch 13th at the SXSW film festival and will screen twice more. For more information, including additional screening times, check out the SXSW Film Festival schedule.