Cube Critic: 'Point and Shoot'
by Euan Kerr
December 05, 2014
MPR News Arts Reporter and Cube Critic Euan Kerr joins Steve Seel and Jill Riley to talk about a new documentary that chronicles a man's quest to define his own masculinity while motorbiking across the Middle East.
Euan calls Point and Shoot "a pheonmenallly strange story." The story centers on a young man from Baltimore, Md., called Matthew VanDyke, who is a typical middle-class guy. After VanDyke earns a degree in Middle Eastern studies from Georgetown University, he realizes he's never been to the Middle East.
At that point, VanDyke embarks on a crash course in manhood, buying himself a powerful motorbike and training on the use of weapons. He then relocates to the Middle East, where he rides thousands of miles back and forth across the region. Along the way, VanDyke creates a new persona for himself, taking on the name Max Hunter and acting the part of an action hero. And because it's the 21st century, VanDyke carries a camera and shoots hours and hours of video of himself as he experiences all of this.
On his return, VanDyke handed over his materials to Marshall Curry (who produced Mistaken for Strangers, the comedy rock-doc about sibling rivalry in the band, The National) and asked Curry to put a film together.
The resulting story goes beyond a man trying to discover himself because VanDyke gets caught in the complexities of the Arab Spring, even ending up in a Libyan prison for some months before joining the Libyan rebels. What's more, VanDyke's story is also complicated by his own obsessive-compulsive behavior.
"It's a really interesting portrait of masculinity, or purported masculinity, in the 21st century, in an age when everyone has cameras," Euan says. "It's really thought-provoking."
Point and Shoot is unrated and is playing at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema in Minneapolis.