An Honest Liar (2015)

There was lots of buzz over this doc among my Skeptic friends. All the screenings sold out at the Cleveland International Film Festival, so I was very excited to see it pop up on Netflix. The archival footage, photos, and interviews are all combined to form an entertaining, informative, and surprising picture. Many people have heard of James Randi carrying on Houdini-type magic acts and debunking psychics and faith healers. He is very clear that as a magician he is going to deceive you, but he finds that a trickster deceiving an audience and claiming real mystic powers is reprehensible. Hence, Randi is an honest liar. I, for one, did not know that The Amazing Randi is gay and in a long-term relationship with a younger man. As in most documentaries, and as couples tend to do, Randi and Jose awkwardly bicker in front of the cameras, but they also demonstrate a deep love for each other. I don't want to give away spoilers, so I won't say much about the twist lie that is uncovered between these two. It is the height of irony and the source of the deepest emotions that this film helps expose. Being a film with cuts between space and time, which inherently is similar to a magic trick, a bit of illusion, is implicitly interesting for illustrating this subject.