Pretentious. Chilling. Masturbatory. Eye-Opening. Incoherent. Brilliantly executed.

Any of the above could be used to describe director Johan Grimonprez’s dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, a pretentious, chilling, masturbatory, eye-opening, incoherent, brilliantly executed look at the history of the media’s coverage of, and reaction to, terrorism, specifically hijackings. Told in fits, starts and spurts of archival footage and seemingly random imagery, inappropriate music and passages from Don DeLillo's Mao II read aloud over cut-paste-chop-splice film clips, Grimonprez’s film manages to be both terribly full of itself and remarkably effective. Quite an achievement, that.

If it all sounds very chaotic, it is. We have film taken from news and library archives, sometimes related to the overarching theme of hijackings and media, some included purely for emotionally impact (or reasons I imagine even the director couldn’t explain with a straight face). Occasionally, we get some of his own footage thrown into the mix, usually a multi-media smorgasbord of flashing, colorful image, low-tech computer visuals and other garish sequences. If there is a narrative, it’s one that comes as if by way of a rambling, babbling homeless man who was once very, very intelligent but whose intellect now shows itself only in brief, insightful rants sandwiched between lengthy, unrelated monologues – which is to say you have to pay very close attention to pull the “arc” from the sensory assault one undergoes while watching this film.

And the assault is one that attacks all senses. The audio is as relentless as the visuals, seemingly random clip after seemingly random clip; voiceovers, news commentators, blurred and slurring musical montages, and musical interludes that bear no relation to what we see on screen – often to disturbing effect. It’s as if an audio archive vomited its contents onto the film and the director pushed about the chunks into some semblance of order. Yet it works.

Ostensibly, Grimonprez’s film is about how, once upon a time, airplane hijackers were a curiosity, altogether common but in many ways harmless, crazed characters or people with a message. People didn’t die. But as the media coverage grew darker and more concerned, so, too, did the hijackings grow darker, until suddenly the ground was stained red with blood and people began seeing terror in the skies. The hijackers escalate. The media, and in turn government reaction, escalates in turn. The hijackers push the envelope further. And so do the media and government. An endless, vicious cycle that claims lives and assaults us with hostile imagery to such a degree that, as a society, we begin to embrace destruction and are desensitized to all but the most horrible of destruction. We come to love that which we fear … both a fear and a love we helped create.

At least, that’s what I pulled from the battering my senses took.

To say that dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is informative would be a lie. While I gathered some snippets of information here and there, it’s not the kind of documentary one walks away from being more informed about the world around them. Maybe, maybe, on a subconscious level, but certainly not in any conscious way. Educational it isn’t. And to say that dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is entertaining would also be a lie. This isn’t the sort of film, documentary or otherwise, you watch for entertainment. It just isn’t. However, it is safe to say that on an artistic level, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y has a lot going for it. Anything that can cause such a visceral reaction in a viewer – and dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y does exactly that – has something going on worth seeing.

Any longer than its 68-minute running time and dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y would collapse under the weight of its own self-importance, but coming in such a digestible chunk, the film manages to successfully attack the psyche, make a point, strut some creative editing and get out before it overstays its welcome.

Presentation 
dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is culled from found sounds, found film, found media. With that in mind, it should not be surprising that neither the sound nor the images are consistent in quality – and that often that quality is very much “archival” in nature. So with that said, judging this disc’s visual and audio quality almost seems unfair. It’s scattered in both areas, but never ceases to be watchable (at least as far as quality goes). And really, with this sort of project that’s all you can ask for.

Extras 
An interview presented in the generous liner notes is the sole “extra” on this bare bones disc. The interview is as pretentious as the film itself sometimes is, but it’s certainly enlightening. Quality stuff.

The Bottom Line
Like most of what you’ll get from Other Cinema, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y isn’t going to be for everybody. It manages to punch the viewer in the gut as often as it overflows with self-indulgence, but, as a whole, the film works. It gets its message across, and in that regard, it’s clearly a success. Recommended for those who like multimedia collage, enjoy bold commentary on the media or who’d like a brief, if scattered, overview of the history of hijackings in the last half of the 20th Century. If you want coherency or loathe “artsy fartsy” film, however, steer clear.

As for me, I liked what I saw.