Nostalgia for quirky individuals\' obsessions

You cant help admiring the dash and humour with which this bewitching collage is assembled, or the superlative use of music

Errol Morris is one of the most original and interesting American independent filmmakers. He specialises in documentaries - but his documentaries aren`t the least bit like anyone else`s - as you`ll know if you`ve been lucky enough to see Gates Of Heaven (about a pet cemetary), The Thin Blue Line (a real life murder mystery) or A Brief History Of Time, Morris` trubute to Stephen Hawkins. His latest film, the superbly titled Fast, Cheap And Out Of Control, is one of his most intriguing efforts. He homes in on four obsessive characters - a lion tamer who hero-worshipped the legendary lion tamer and sometime film star, Clyde Beatty; a topiarist, who makes impressive animals out of garden bushes; a scientist who works with the strange mole-rat, a rodent which lives like an ant; and another scientist who works with robots, specialising in insect-like machines.Morris intercuts interviews and footage of these four at work with archive material from cheesey old movies and movie serials; and he sometimes shows us one obsessive character while the soundtrack features another. The message of this film is oblique to say the least; Morris clearly loves these curious characters, and regrets that their kind of unique dedication may be a thing of the past. But even if you don`t subscribe to the filmmaker`s conclusions, you can`t help admiring the dash and humour with which this bewitching collage is assembled, or the superlative use of the music, by Caleb Sampson, which accompanies it all.