Watch Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause For Free

Nice effects though.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Despite having known people who are either great fans of Noam Chomsky, or think he's a tired relic from the 1960s, I really had no opinion of the man, save that I knew he gained fame as a linguist, although I could not elucidate any of his theories, and that he was a liberal socialist with Marxist leanings. So, stumbling across the DVD of the 2003 documentary Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without A Pause, in a used video store, a film which followed him on a 2002 book tour for his book 9-11, I decided to get it, just so I could have a little bit of knowledge about the man the next time a person, pro or con, spoke of him. While glad I got the film, my initial reaction to this dull and ill edited hagiography was, so what's all the fuss about?For a man with so many degrees, lauded as 'the most important intellectual alive', by the New York Times, according to the DVD's case, there sure was not a lot there, intellectually speaking. I know I would chew him up and spit him out in a debate, and I wouldn't even want to watch what a William F. Buckley could do to him. Granted, the whole film was seemingly about Chomsky seeing conspiracies everywhere, and having glazed eyed coeds nod in bewildering approval of the most inane and outrageous things he'd say, rather than being on linguistics, so maybe that's the reason he came off so badly. But, again, if he is a linguist, and tops in his field, why in the world would anyone care what he has to say on anything outside his field of expertise?…. Even worse are his acolytes, who seem to further insulate the man from reality, by fostering delusions that Chomsky is a target for Zionist assassins. What little I knew of Chomsky before watching this film, this much I knew: he was generally considered a has been, and pretty much irrelevant intellectually, since the fall of the Soviet Empire. The film is so poorly structured, and without a narrative thread, that it's difficult to separate all of the jumble. His wife, Carol, as example, apparently gave one interview, which was chopped up and dropped wherever in the film. She seems a nice enough woman, but wholly out of her element answering anything but the most basic questions about their life. The lone interesting thing she says is that 9/11 was a great thing for the Chomskys, for he has reaped a great deal of money in speaking fees since then.Not surprisingly, this sort of film gives almost no biographical background. It's assumed that all viewers must know all the plaudits this 'great man' bears. Chomsky is rarely interviewed one on one. Stylistically, there are no camera movements, no interesting edits, nor any signature touches, and most of the film is disjunct rambles by Chomsky, videotaped huzzahs of Chomsky declaiming on this or that, and slack-jawed and awed students looking at him as if he were immaterial, that is when dimwitted coeds are not asking barely audible and ridiculously simplistic questions to him. This is really poor film-making by director and editor Will Pascoe, who in the DVD's Filmmaker Statement, shows he's yet another uncritical acolyte of Chomsky's. Other than that, one of the surest signs that this is not an objective documentary, but mere agitprop, and a vanity piece of agitprop, at that, is that not a single time is Chomsky shown struggling with an answer. He seems to be a font of knowledge that has no bounds.Given that much of this dreck was filmed during Chomsky's lectures at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, prior to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, much of what Chomsky says seems as remote as things from the Vietnam War era. Yes, he makes some good points, here and there, on American media complicity before the war, but he follows them up with sheer lunacy, for he seems to not realize that most conspiracies are ad hoc, and not fully plotted out cabals. As example, he claims that the advertising industry is a cabal that mercilessly controls the populace, but says not a word about the zombied populace that lets itself be so controlled. Similarly, he claims Trilateralists run the world and that people's fear of crime is yet another cabal's result. Of course, that claim so fully explains away rape crisis centers, and all that wasted time and money district attorneys' offices consume. He also makes the absurd claim that Cuba has been the victim of terrorism for decades, when Castro and company were great sponsors of it, in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, until the Soviet Union fell. I can only guess that the UFO conspiracists are just waiting for Chomsky to proclaim that gray aliens have set up species-mixing impregnation centers up in Idaho.In his simpleminded world without grays, Chomsky is frighteningly as dense as the members of Bushco, whom he reviles, are; even more so since they lay no claim to being intellectuals. In short, Chomsky is a man living in the past, in over his head on most issues, and out of his depth intellectually. Near this film's end he warns, 'Be cautious when you hear about intellectuals being fighters for justice,' yet one can only laugh, as the man seemingly has never met a revolutionary person nor idea that he didn't like, no matter how barbarous their crimes, and anti-intellectual their posit. Please, pause before you waste your time and money on this silly, and already irrelevant, DVD.

Documentaries are the in thing these days it seems and I rented this film just based on the fact I wanted to hear what Noam Chomsky was up to these days given events of the last couple of years and the film did not disappoint. Chomsky's ability to look at a subject like the war in Iraq and explore the various causes and reasons our brave troops are over there is quite powerful. The film actually made me question a lot of what I hear and see on TV. I had no idea how devestating the UN Sanctions were on the actual people of Iraq, while the government was more or less unaffected because of the corruption there. I had no idea that National Public Radio was forced by Washington to cancel Chomsky's appearance on the radio for fear of what he might say and how controversial it would be. Chomsky tells this story in an amusing and insightful way which is what I really appreciated from this film. "Rebel Without A Pause" shows Chomsky as the bright, well-read intellectual we all know him to be, but it also gives us a sense of the charm, wit, and sarcasm that he holds back from the public (I guess because he's always talking about horrible things like war and poverty and globalization). If you want an interesting look "behind the man" this film will give it to you but will also give you tons of Chomsky post-911 so you can read his books or watch this film and get a good synthesis of the last few books he has written. The DVD extras are interesting as well.

First off, I agree with quite a bit that escapes Mr. Chomsky's mouth. His matter-of-fact delivery of interesting counterpoint is what makes the man a hit on the university campus circuit. He comes across likable, unassuming, pragmatic. He doesn't cater to the current political style (obnoxious bi-partisanship) and he sets his sights on the far left as well as the far right, chastising both, and for good reason.Unfortunately, the film itself is a dud. In fact, I would not even call this a documentary but rather just a collection of speeches. Watching "Rebel Without a Pause" is no different from watching a speaker on a 3am taped segment on CSPAN. There are no camera movements, no edits, no stylistic touches. There is no story, no narrative.Technically speaking, the production is strictly amateurish. Audio is terrible and inconsistent; sometimes we cannot hear Noam speak, other times we cannot hear the questions that are being posited by those in attendance. When Noam is speaking rarely are we allowed to see the reactions of the audience except when we are given a quick shot of his wife who apparently attends every one of his speeches and beams with pride every time we see her.I cannot recommend this film and would say that you're probably better off checking out his taped speeches on cassette or CD to listen to in the car.4 out of 10 stars...and I'm in a generous mood today.

This was an eye-opener for me. I just read Noam Chomsky's book about September 11th (called "9-11") and I was really interested in learning more. I saw this film on TV and I was amazed at the man's ability to recall facts and figures from articles, interviews, etc. He really is one of the smartest speakers in the world today. His wife, Carol actually steals the show as she explains what it's like to live with such a mind. Interesting tidbits from Carol was that Noam reads 6 newspapers a day and over 80 journals every year. The fact that he's really into his grandchildren and to meeting with students and talking about the issues made me see him more as a grandfather than a radical intellectual. The reflections and insights from others in the film are equally revealing. It becomes clear that Chomsky has influenced successive generations of people and still exerts enormous influence in the world today. There is so much interesting bits from Chomsky on so many issues I am hoping to either see it on TV again or in the theatres or on video so I can pay more attention to what he's talking about. Try and get it at your local video store that specializes in non-Hollywood blockbuster films and prepare to be challenged by Chomsky and his ideas.