Generative Documentary Eno Mistakes AI Manipulation for Artful Filmmaking

There’s an innate miscalculation at the core of Eno, director Gary Hustwit’s documentary about the career of avant-garde recording artist and producer Brian Eno. This has everything to do with the director’s decision to make the “first generative feature film,” incorporating an AI software developed by the film’s “director of technology” Brendan Dawes into the film’s ongoing re-editing process. In order to ensure that a different version of the film is viewed each time, Dawes and Hustwit allow the software to mine from its subject’s vast visual archive, resulting in sequences strung together at random during every screening. Yet this approach fundamentally misunderstands Eno’s entire creative ethos, which relies on technology to elevate—not replace—the unique human ability to create art, a quality that is sorely remiss here. 

Considered a pioneering figure in ambient and electronic composition, Eno’s esoteric oeuvre spurred several famous rock acts to seek him out as a producer, among them U2, Talking Heads, Coldplay and Devo. The algorithm provides a small window into some specific creative collaborations, though the version of the film that I watched proved to be a bit U2-heavy for my liking. (More Talking Heads or Devo segments would have been much preferred). As opposed to being a comprehensive document of Eno’s impressive output, the software appears to riffle through eras of the musician’s ongoing career, retrieving edited snippets that correspond to the predetermined, generally linear, timeline explored in the film. Sure, Eno manages to depict his childhood fascination with song, involvement in Roxy Music, the co-creation of the “Oblique Strategies” card technique, and so on, but lacks broader connective context for these stages of Eno’s musical métier. 

Of course, a huge advantage of Eno is the extensive interviews featured with its subject. Completely aware of his penchant for oration, Eno goes into dizzying detail about his sonic fascinations and process, which are intriguing but, again, feel meandering. Though the film boasts two editors—Maya Tippett and Marley McDonald—their input was limited to culling and cutting countless snippets for the algorithm to pick from. No matter how much flesh-and-blood involvement went into crafting Eno’s software, it will never mimic the distinct human sense for narrative. Even if the version I watched contained some incredible footage—from an old anecdote about him sneaking a piss in Marcel Duchamp’s notorious sculpture to musings about glam rock altering his perception of gender—there should have been more hands-on involvement to explore some of these juicy tangents rather than allowing them to bleed into one arbitrary clip after another.

Presumably, the motivation behind generative filmmaking here has everything to do with Eno’s own work in the realm of generative music. However, these different mediums—made during vastly different technological periods—are not actually made in the same vein. The musician would initially work with cassette tape loops, an analog method that would produce different sounds with each resulting play by way of small, accumulating differences in the physical tape. (This process was used during the making of his 1978 album Music for Airports). Eno would also later work with CDs and computer algorithms with similar results, but the tangible artistry behind this method was always tantamount to the technology used to create it. With Hustwit’s film, creative intention is practically void from the final product; unlike Eno, the filmmaker doesn’t know the difference between art and artifice.

The most hypocritical aspect of Eno, however, is the juxtaposition of the energy-guzzling reality of AI with the musician’s own fervent environmentalism. “Because we come from a Western, technological culture—one which regards nature as something to be mastered and exploited—we tend to value all of the capacities that have to do with control and command of a situation,” Eno explains. It’s almost as if he’s commenting on the supposed craft of this very documentary, which seeks to present each and every possible iteration of a project instead of implementing a singular vision. Why platform an unsustainable technology for the mere purpose of presenting archival clips to a niche fanbase that might very well already be familiar with the ground covered in this documentary? In a word, it just seems wasteful.

While industry experimentation with AI filmmaking is only just beginning (though not without major backlash), Eno proves that this method doesn’t yield good storytelling; Hustwit’s documentary even appears to argue against its own existence. “I started to realize that I was doing this on a planet that was suddenly, quite noticeably, getting worse,” Eno says amid the natural abundance surrounding his Western England home. “I thought, well here’s an odd paradox: Here I am celebrating nature and taking inspiration from it, and at the same time I’m watching it disappear. Let’s acknowledge that without it, none of us would be doing anything. We’ve got to start looking after it.” Unfortunately for the experimental legend, his involvement in this project goes directly against this otherwise well-intentioned viewpoint.

Director: Gary Hustwit 
Release Date: July 12, 2024 (Film First)

Natalia Keogan is a freelance writer and editor with a concerted focus on independent film. Her interviews and criticism have appeared in Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Backstage Magazine, SlashFilm, Blood Knife and Daily Grindhouse, among others. She lives in Queens, New York with her large orange cat. Find her on Twitter @nataliakeogan