I recently had the
pleasure of watching a documentary that made a name for itself at several film
festivals last year, including Tribeca. “An Honest Liar” (2014) details the life
of legendary magician and skeptic James Randi, covering his career as a
magician and escape artist, his homosexuality, and his decades-long mission to
debunk psychics of all varieties and MO’s.
The recounting of how
Randi exposed the likes of Peter Popoff, Uri Gellar, and the media’s willful
blindness strike me as a the story of man who, with his intelligence and skill,
could easily have become the best of the hustlers he despises, instead using
his gifts to expose and educate the public about such schemes and the con men
behind them. Sadly, his message of skepticism and the value of rational thought
often fall on ears in deaf denial.
Well edited, but
slightly shorter in length then it should be, “An Honest Liar” delivers its
truth potently, as so few documentaries do. That truth is, “People believe what
they need to believe”. Whether it is the public who need a healer, con artists
who lie to put food on the table, or even Randi himself (I’m not giving away
any spoilers); people believe in the reality they need to as a mechanism for
living. And that point is what makes James Randi’s story so intriguing and so
important.
I would recommend “An
Honest Liar” to anyone interested in James Randi’s career or understanding
man’s capacity to deceive and be deceived.
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