Shifty: This is another story about rational control

I'm usually right on top of the new Adam Curtis films, but it took me six months to see there was a new project out there in the world. Once I was made aware of Shifty, I watched it all as quickly as humanly possible. You should too, because Curtis's films are always good.

I always think of them as essay films, with Curtis sometimes making wild leaps in deduction to bring separate events together under a common theme, just enough to push them out of straight documentary territory. But the hidden connections he finds in the world are always well argued and presented, and make some strange sense of the white noise of modern culture.

You always know what you are going to get - unearthed archive footage that is almost poetic, beams of light in dark rooms, rampant individualism making everything worse, and the great institutions of the world  giving up power to new money in the name of rational ideas, and seeing it pissed all away.

As bad as the world is now, there are also some reminders of how awful the good old days could be - the footage of the cops interrogating a rape victim is really hard to watch, because they really are unbelievable cunts. 

Some of the footage is so on the nose that it's hilarious - Princess Diana locked outside while the establishment party within; or a leering Jimmy Saville taking a bunch of quiet kids inside Thatcher's office. But it's also possible to be heartbroken by an elephant losing its soulmates, or buoyed by the fury of old soldiers who saw their complex pasts reduced to basic jingoism.

My favourite bit of film is the part where it captures all the girls looking incredibly unimpressed at the air guitar club in the 1980s. Those poor, poor girls. 

I do miss Curtis' narration, mainly because I really like the way he says 'rational' and 'control', but there is still an easy narrative to follow. And Shifty also comes with a pleasing amount of self reflection in its closing moments, admitting to the manipulation in the five films you have just watched.

Curtis is no hypocrite, just self aware enough to see what he is doing. It is informative, enraging, incredibly entertaining and occasionally moving. Just like life.