Pandora's Box (1992) User Reviews

Engineers and Mathematicians Spawn Hapless Technocrats

[Sandsquish · 8/10 · 21 October 2008]

Adam Curtis' first documentary series explores the tragicomic consequences of engineers', mathematicians', scientists', and bureaucrats' attempts to apply their specialized theories to a wide range of phenomenon, creating, each time, more problems than they solve.

The Soviet Union, for instance, wanted its socialist economy to provide a better life for its people, and in "The Engineer's Plot," bureaucrats, engineers, and workers describe how their leaders believed that massive industrialization would allow them to do this. But their increasing dependence on engineering and computer-derived targets only hamstrung politicians and bewildered citizens.

Meanwhile, their foe, the United States, turned to mathematicians to help them derive a strategy for waging the Cold War. In "To the Brink of Eternity," researchers, mathematicians, politicians, and soldiers relate how game theory and mathematical modeling seemed like useful tools, but only created a world of paranoia and brutality when applied to the arms race and the war in Vietnam.

Across the Atlantic, Britain, struggling to keep its head up in a world that seemed to be passing it by, turned to economists to help it become prosperous and powerful again. In "The League of Gentlemen," economists, politicians, and businessmen reveal that their attempts to use Keynesian economics, monetarism, and, finally, laissez-faire capitalism to create wealth failed and that they, actually, have no idea how, or whether, market systems work.

Back in the U.S., chemists, entomologists, farmers, and ecologists describe, in "Goodbye, Mrs. Ant," how the chemical industry tried to change agriculture though the use of pesticides and then attempted to justify or hide the unsettling consequences of these poisons on human and environmental health.

In Africa, the Gold Coast's reliance on a new hydro-electric power plant to transform it into an industrialized nation backfired. In "Black Power," politicians and businessmen discuss how international markets and Cold-War politics transformed the project from an unlikely panacea into a corrupt poverty trap.

And across the industrialized world, physicists who felt guilty for unleashing nuclear fission on the world discussed the feasibility of nuclear power. In "A Is for Atom," they, engineers, politicians, and businessmen recall how dreams of an atomic-powered utopia blinded them to the practical, safety, and economic problems of fission-derived energy, resulting in several major radiation leaks, two core meltdowns, and tons of unstorable waste products.

Curtis' juxtaposition of archival footage with historical PR films emphasizes the futile, and frequently absurd, plight of technocrats who attempt to bludgeon the world into a shape that fits technical procedures which read more like science-fiction than science.

Tales of science and society

[poc-1 · 8/10 · 20 May 2008]

Pandora's box is a set of six documentaries concerning the impact of science and technology and society the 20th Century. Each episode is a story of how leaders of different societies strove to create a better, more controllable world based on science and technology but in the end their efforts failed when they came in contact with human desire, emotion and politics.

Although the premise sounds deadly dull, Adam Curtis' documentaries are always entertaining. The irreverent use of fifties music and clips from old movies serve to enliven otherwise dry subjects such as Keynesian economics versus Monetarism (Episode 3 "The League of Gentlemen") or the story of DDT (episode 4 "Goodbye, Mrs Ant"). The story behind the story is another constant theme and it is here that the documentaries really shine, there is lots of footage and material and interviews with key people showing that a great deal of work went into the researching of this series. The interviews in particular are of real historic interest and could never be repeated, as many of the individuals and institutions have since passed away.

Where he tends to fall down is that he sometimes makes some very tenuous links and comparisons. For instance in comparing the causes Three-Mile-island Disaster with Chernobyl, ("A is for Atom", Episode 6) Curtis seems to ignore the obvious point that in the Soviet Union safety standards were looser and life was cheaper than in the US. In episode 5 ("Black Power"), Curtis relates the story of the Volta Dam in Ghana and how the dreams of its leader Kwame Nkrumah to industrialize fell apart when big business got involved forcing him to accept poor business terms to get the dam built and the country descended into corruption. Curtis seems far too soft on Nkrumah's own responsibility for the mess his country ended up in.

Although decidedly left-wing, Curtis is no communist and even if your political views are right wing you will find this series thought provoking. For example Episode 1 ("The Engineer's Plot") on the Soviet Union is the best expose of the failures of state planning that you will see. Curtis has footage from the last days of the Soviet Union's planning system with interviews with the poor benighted Russians actually trying to make it work. Taxi drivers have to drive in circles to meet their mileage quota. Shoe manufacturers discover that their customers want platform shoes but by the time the factory is built, the shoes are out of fashion. The story of DDT (Episode 4 "Goodbye Mrs Ant") showed how the sciences of entomology and ecology were abused for political means by the environmental movement. The lawyer behind the case gleefully showed his strategy of showing that even minuscule amounts of chemical can be harmful. When it was subsequently proved that DDT was detectable in mothers milk, the public outcry was sufficient to get it banned. The fact that DDT itself is actually harmless to people is demonstrated rather shockingly by one advocate actually eating the stuff. Curtis is careful not to say that DDT is good or bad per se, just that when politics and business got involved, genuine science was drowned out.

You definitely get the feeling there is a moral to each of these stories but it is hard to say precisely what that message is. Perhaps it is we should be more skeptical about science. Perhaps it is that rationality is impossible outside science. In any case this is not unbiased history, Curtis has very particular and even unique slants on the stories that he tells. Despite this it does not suffer from being opinion. It is both entertaining and informing, whatever side of the argument you prefer.

Fables From The Age Of Science

[timdalton007 · 8/10 · 28 March 2020]

Once upon a time, science offered up solutions on a myriad of levels. Planned economies, vast industrialization, limitless nuclear power, all these, and more, were the great dreams of the 20th century. By century's end, however, they had become nightmares and traps. How they became that way is the subject of Adam Curtis' Pandora's Box, a six-part series that aired on BBC Two nearly thirty years ago and which hasn't lost any of its power.

Across those six episodes, it offers up, to paraphrase the series' subtitle, "fables from the age of science." It starts with the Soviet Union and how the grand notions of 'social engineering' and how industrializing Russia would create a 'rational society' instead led to quotas, stagnation, and the ultimate collapse of the system under its own weight. As Curtis puts it, "What had begun as a grand moral attempt to build a rational society ended by creating a bizarre, bewildering existence for millions of Soviet people."

Curtis moves across the Cold War divide for the middle third of the series, focusing on America and the UK. The second episode takes on the reliance upon game theory and systems analysis inside the Pentagon and its associated think tanks, and its effect upon US defense policy. It leads to some startling moments of archival footage with members of said think tanks insisting that a limited nuclear war was not only possible but a welcome possibility. All before culminating in the science fiction dreams of Reagan's Star Wars program.

Episode three, meanwhile, shifts to the UK and the attempts across thirty years and successive British governments to use different economists to plan and reach targeted economic growth. From MacMillan and Wilson to Thatcher, it's a remarkable journey through efforts to turn economic theory into reality. Efforts that, as Alan Budd observes at the episode's conclusion, likely did far more harm than good. Not to mention creating surreal moments where Curtis demonstrates Thatcher praising Monetarism in one clip before claiming to have never subscribed to it just a few minutes (or a rather a few years) later.

Governments weren't alone in twisting science to their own ends. Episode four, Goodbye Mrs. Ant, looks at the widespread use of DDT in the US from the 1940s to the 1960s. It explores how the miracle chemical that saved lives in the Pacific Theater of World War II became a multi-million dollar industry, despite warnings that soon appeared, and how it co-opted entomology in the process. The fight to reveals its dangers gets considerable focus, as does how that fight helped give rise to the modern environmental movement, allowing politics and business pressures to transform the science of ecology.

Africa becomes the focus of episode five. In the 1950s, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah dreamed of turning his country into the new industrial heart of a post-colonial continent. To do it, Nkrumah and the nation required the building of the Volta River dam. The dream of using science to change an entire country, however, soon turned into a nightmare of government corruption and the politics of the Cold War, culminating in a CIA backed coup. Nearly thirty years after the dam's construction was complete, the only people who seemed to have benefitted from it was the American corporation that helped finance its building.

The final installment looks at the development of nuclear power plants in the US, UK, and inside the Soviet Union. What started as an energy panacea, sold to the public through information films such as the episode's namesake A is for Atom, seemed to offer a more benevolent side to the nuclear age. Instead, thanks to economic factors and the reluctance of both government and those inside the industry to admit to faults for fear of utterly destroying it, dozens of potentially unsafe nuclear reactors found themselves populating the countryside of these three countries. The accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were to demonstrate, this conflict between science and economics was to have disastrous results.

Across all six episodes, Curtis finds ways of presenting these intriguing tales of science and politics gone wrong. There are the expected interviews with figures involved in each, including surreal scenes of Soviet planners holding up a long computer print out regarding the expected demand for pantyhose and of entomologist Gordon Edwards eating from a carton of DDT to demonstrate how harmless it is. Curtis all draws on a wealth of archival material, from the BBC archives and others, to illustrate the dreams that were and the nightmares they became. It's an incredible combination, offering juxtapositions that are sometimes humorous, sometimes horrifying, but always informative.

If nothing else, Pandora's Box lives up to its subtitle. These are tales of science and technology offer panaceas to issues of war, peace, and economy. In the end, however, they often run foul of human concerns, unpredictable if not petty at times. Perhaps, in the end, the fault lies not with these would-be cures but with those administering them, unleashing forces they wish to harness but ultimately discover they are nigh helpless to stop.

Not unlike Pandora and her mythical box, after all.

Each Episode Cut by 12 mins

[garysignature · 10/10 · 23 November 2018]

As with HOLLYWOOD UK and who knows how many other BBC series, all repeat showings of PANODORA'S BOX have been cut by approx 12 mins per episode. Original length for each episode was around 58 mins. If you made v-t recordings of BBC's original transmission from 1992, as I did, preserve them, as the BBC should have done. BBC have not learned from its days of wiping programmes. The cuts have nothing to do with copyright complications. Nowadays, after first screenings, BBC lease series out to syndication, and networks cut length to insert advertisements. When BBC wants to repeat a series years later, it gets a syndicated copy. And that's how PANDORA'S BOX ends up around 45 mins per episode and misinformation of the programme length propagates. PANDORA'S BOX, like HOLLYWOOD UK, is one of the best documentary series ever made, but that didn't save it from witless vandalism. Once again it is down to the viewer to take responsibility for archiving programmes.

All is left is hope?

[imdb-92083 · 10/10 · 3 April 2024]

Made a while ago, when TV was great.

I lived through the latter bits, born in 70, so missed the start of nuclear- but we'll remember the nuclear drills of the latter years, 4 minute warning etc. It's fascinating to know Reagan's Star Wars program, designed by Sci-Fi writers to bring down the USSR, which they did with unexpected consequences- better the devil you know eh Putin?

Heavy on old footage, cartoons, with narration and the occasional interview. It is a unique series, kind of like if Tarantino or Gilliam did it.

Onto money, capitalism. And our politics in Britain - long ago, people clammering for wage rises in inflation. In 2024, exactly the same as our once great country collapses. With Labour messing it up as we head into another General Election which they will win, "Make Britain Great Again", long before Trump stole it. If you are Right or Left it makes no odds.

Then, concluding with the atomic bomb. Years before the cinema friendly Oppenheimer.

As a computer/system analyst, inspired by a brief period of prosperity in the 80's. It is fascinating to learn how we got to where we are today, in 2024. I no longer do this job after seeing the reality of what I had helped to do to the world.

"Now I have become death, destroyer or worlds" as Oppenheimer" said.