The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase1998

Surprising to see early work and influences of Act of Killing's director. This is totally different from his recent work, a media mashup that will mutate your relationship with your microwave.

The fictional documentary style offers insight into how we abstract histories as a cultural reference point. The haunting storyline veers from fact to the fantasy of the characters, showing how a traumatic event is internalized by those who took part and capturing the alien yet strangely familiar culture that enabled it. The dark psyches of the Southern characters and connections to other violent events in the area, like the colonial wars of the Louisiana Purchase and the creation of the atomic bomb, paint a haunting picture of the South.

The accent of the female lead is off-putting, inauthentic.

A ridiculous cocktail of staged and archival footage, ramblings about UFO abductions, alien impregnation, hate speech about Jews and The Beatles, mixed with old ads for home appliances and atomic test footage. Is this supposed to be Oppenheimer's "History of America"? Really nothing about The Louisiana Purchase in this film. It makes me wonder about the more absurd elements in Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing"...

Any film that has Ruth Norman, late founder of the UNARIUS Academy of Science (so-called) can't be all bad. In fact, this movie is very good.

slapped together arty...tolerable