Review of Pandora’s Box (1992)
Adam Curtis (writer-director).
The misapplication and political abuse of science-adjacent pursuits throughout the 20th century: Soviet economic centralization, environmentalism versus ecology, industrialization in Ghana, and finally the past future of the atomic age.
Curtis’s debut as head of a whole series, already true to his style. Less polished than his later work, but funny and absorbing. In that later work, Curtis returnd to two of his subjects here: Cold War game theory, which is seen from a cultural angle in The Trap (2007), and Thatcherite monetarism, revisited in The Mayfair Set (1999).