Artist Collapse

The current documentary landscape is chockfull of doom-laden scenarios of every stripe. But few apocalyptic visions are as comprehensive and frighteningly assured as the one offered by Michael Ruppert, the subject of Chris Smith’s mesmerizing documentary Collapse. A former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, Ruppert has chased big stories for his self-published newsletter, From The Wilderness, on everything from CIA involvement in drug trafficking to the current economic crisis, which he claims to have predicted long before it gobsmacked the mainstream media. Smith gives Ruppert the floor, but his occasional interjections question whether his subject has walled himself into an argument by accepting only the information that supports his point of view. There are many layers to the man and the movie, and it’s hard not to leave the theater shaken.

Updated 03/03/2010