Click here to listen to Alex Gibney on KNIFE: THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF SALMAN RUSHDIE
Alex Gibney’s documentary consideration of the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, in case your forgot, is a massive piece of work timing in just shy of 4 hours, but not a sprawling one. On the surface, a straightforward biography of the once (and future?) trillionaire, it does more than merely offer those he’s known and those who have made a study of him. In his own words, Gibney is out to solve the mystery of how he amassed such a fortune, and the far more interesting question of how we gave it to him. This is a smart move. It focuses on a story of greed, backstabbing, and what happens when empathy is absent. Besides, a little Elon, even when filtered through the lens of those in his orbit, can go a long way and does nothing to elevate him in anyone’s esteem besides his own. This is a man described as a person who views people as things, and both are disposable cogs.
There are few surprises for those who have followed Musk even superficially. This is more a work of confirmation than of discovery, but the best one comes right at the beginning and serves as one of the documentary’s most novel moves. Gibney was contacted by Musk himself to make a documentary about him. The ego of it is no surprise. Rather, it’s the choice of an established and esteemed documentarian instead of one eager to make a mark, even if it means catering to the whims of, well, by the end of the film you will have come to your own conclusions about what word works best. Naturally, Musk fell out with Gibney, a trope that will echo throughout the film. Gibney, however, was now intrigued by that ci-mentioned mystery. Unwilling to abandon the project because he could no longer rely on a sit-down interview with Musk, he had his team gather audio everything that Musk has ever said and catalogue it. Then, this is where Gibney’s brilliance truly shines, he had a virtual version of Musk, visualized in the sort of science-fiction setting he prefers in his video games, to comment on the story, and on himself, as the film progresses. In a nod that is perhaps gratitude for bringing the initial idea to him, or a sly satire of the most refined nature, Gibney has made this version of Musk, tinted in surreal tinges of red and blue, a more rugged, less off-putting simulacrum. Either way, when dealing with a man who adores attention, there is something poetic about using his very own words from his very own mouth (analog and virtual). The frank smugness is grotesquely fascinating.
The story proceeds from his first ventures in Silicon Valley, financed by his wealthy father, and covers his ups and his downs there, a cycle that somehow made him hundreds of millions of dollars. In the film clips, Musk is younger, thinner, and his jaw is not yet quite the shape he wanted it to be, but the oddly artificial cast is already there. The smile that is reads as a smirk and the pettiness that is the closest Musk may come to a real human emotion. The discarded wives, girlfriends, and baby mamas check in, as do ex-associates and the journalists that Musk courted at first and then reviled. As mentioned before, this is nothing new, but the specifics of narcissism and cruelty are still breathtaking. The way Musk’s father described Elon as a boy reading a comic book completely unperturbed by a family friend dying a few feet away should give us all more than a little pause, not just for the action described, but also the nonchalance with which Musk senior describes it.
So much for part one. Part two deals with the more recent past, as in moving from tech to politics. After part one, it’s easy to understand why MAGA was so appealing to him. After part two, the absolute control Musk obtained of government records as DOGE chief, and the stranglehold for which he lusted and still lusts should make us all want to storm a barricade. But the most troubling part of all this is how he was able to hornswoggle his way into this position.
This is the question that Gibney persistently asks with pointed juxtapositions and a focus on how the ultra-wealthy operate in their own rarified world. Everyone who came into contact with Musk knew exactly what he was, what he had done in the past, and was capable of doing in the future and, nonetheless, still threw in their lot with him. There is an even more pointed question. Is he a genius or is he a psychopath, and what happens if he’s both? The one bright spot in all this is that we also discover Musk’s inability to understand that there might be other smart people out there. The ones who proved his self-driving Tesla killed people with data Musk thought couldn’t be found but were practically hiding in plain sight.
There were plenty of smart people in Silicon Valley back in its wild west days, some that were probably more personable than this guy. What is wrong with the culture or the system or whatever you want to call it that let Musk rise to the top? We could ask the same question of his political counterpart currently sitting in the Oval Office. Alas, the talking heads in MUSK can’t give us that answer, but the fact that it is posited with such clarity is a warning siren that could not possibly be more timely or more pressing.
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