Estimate of the Situation
Is “The Phenomenon” Phenomenal?
Even while plagued by production and distribution challenges, director James Fox still manages to make a triumphant and compelling one-of-a-kind statement about UFO/UAP reality.
This is the one we’ve been waiting for, the non-fiction documentary you can tell your friends and family to watch. The Phenomenon is guaranteed to get them thinking about UFO/UAP reality in a deeper way than they’ve probably ever experienced before.
Even for people who are well-read in the literature, this film still holds surprises and buried treasures, but the thrill is seeing footage and hearing interviews you never knew existed. The joy of The Phenomenon is that it may be the most assured, professional and memorable telling of what is a familiar story for many. What’s wonderful is how normal and reasonable it makes a discussion of this impossible-but-true reality.
The Phenomenon most definitely exists in a lineage with filmmaker James Fox’s most accomplished previous documentaries on this topic — Out of the Blue and I Know What I Saw. This brand extension, and that’s what it is, comes with quality improvement in every dimension.
This time, however, Fox has gone for context, framing the entire issue into a historical narrative. This prepares us with just enough knowledge to appreciate our arrival in the present day, or at least 2017.
For someone who’s seen the previous work multiple times, it feels like comfortable storytelling with friends, down to some of the same sound-bites. Reliable Evelyn Trent is back to tell her same story about the McMinnville photos, along with stoic Kenneth Arnold, the Twining Memo Redux, and some great moments with UFOlogy’s Greatest Hits like the Socorro case with legit Lonnie Zamora audio, and Bentwaters told from the POV of it being a nuclear base like Roswell and, of course, astronauts like the blunt Gordon Cooper and the no-nonsense Edgar Mitchell. The film even takes a tour with staid General Samford doing the limited modified hang-out after the Washington sightings of 1952 in the biggest news conference held at the Pentagon since World War II and makes it feel original and propulsive.
We’ve seen these parts before, but this time they don’t feel like UFO cultural detritus that the TV cousins are peddling. The feeling you get watching this is more like, hallelujah, someone responsible has made a valuable contribution to stabilizing and presenting wonderful historical archive material that will be highly valued in the years of disclosure to come.
Because it’s been assembled from sturdier material all around the confidence you feel watching it is greater than the previous works. There’s an abduance of new footage and material. One of my favorites is Gerald Ford demanding official investigation of UFO reports, and he sounds pissed.
That’s just the first half, setting the table, as it were, for an understanding that this kind of thing has been going on for a while, people have known about it, and it’s the real deal. The section on Roswell is wonderful, clearly establishing the incident as the original sin of the cover-up, and getting to linger on the Jesse Marcel interview is a real treat. The examination of the UFO obsession with our nuclear capabilities is riveting.
The second half takes us into where we are today, starting through the prism of the New York Times, and its initial revelations about the AATIP study. Then there’s the Navy videos in a clear, clean and concise telling, and the film is off to the races. The Nimitz incident gets a terrific briefing and F-18 Super Hornet pilot David Fravor’s tale gets room to breathe in a context that is gut-churning.
The political gang is all here in this latter part, too. John Podesta, Bill Richardson, the Clintons, Senator Harry Reid. We’ve seen them in other shows, but their statements here feel like part of a larger whole.
No one in this film slings a backpack into a covertible and hits the open road in search of the truth. There’s another vibe here, owing to the passion of the man who has spent years making this film.
James Fox (Director/Producer)
Filmmaker James Fox has reportedly suffered for his art greatly in a process that took longer and threw more obstacles in his path than he should have ever had to endure. It didn’t help that the coronavirus broke his distribution deal for a theatrical release. Still, the film has landed as a digital download, available on October 6, in most places where you can get this kind of content.
Fox claims to have been disappointed with all three of his previous films on the subject, despite having sold them to mainstream outlets like Discovery, SyFy, and A&E. He says he’s learned from previous mistakes, stepping up production value, a strong narrative and b-roll worthy of the big screen. Most of all, he says they decided to spend time not just on evidence, but the human factor of the phenomenon.
The work that’s gone into this, through Fox’s global production efforts and dogged archival work can’t be minimized.
Fox is the driving force but he has also assembled a Who’s Who of Ufology to give this outing its scope and breadth, saying it “took an army of people to make this happen.” A key player, according to Fox, is Marc Barasch who came aboard as a writer/producer and “helped string the stories together with a powerful narrative.” Several are friends of mine like Lee Speigel, a man who actually briefed the United Nations about the UFO issue. Others include big names, like Jacques Vallee who Fox calls “the Spielberg of UFOs.”
“To say it was an honor to work with him, would be the world’s biggest understatement. Jacques became involved initially with extreme trepidation but after several meetings in the studio to review the material we were working with his involvement grew and grew. We edited the bulk of the film (3.5 years) in a wood cabin with limited electricity (no heater) no running water, no toilet, no fridge and no internet. Yet Jacques spent weekend after weekend sitting in on marathon edit sessions helping piece the story together in a way that’s never been done.”
This one has obviously meant a lot to Fox. He seems to have put his heart and soul on the line here to give the production its scope, its historical research, the finding of lost archives and never before seen historical film. Add in his crisp video presentation, clean audio and professional polish. He told Rogue Planet about the process:
With critical help from UFO researcher, David Marler, who has one of the largest UFO archives on the planet, and the full time work of my sister, Kelly, we unearthed material that most of the world, and even UFO historians, have never seen. It was a monumental effort that took several years and cost more than I’d spent on one of my earlier films, Out of the Blue. We also involved the United Nations, and CEOs from ABC and CBS.
Fox also brought in a secret weapon this time. He’s given us, if not the voice of God, at least the voice of truth.
Peter Coyote (Narrator)
The famed narrator — Ken Burns’ go-to voice — delivers the goods in The Phenomenon in his steady, honest, decent Henry Fonda-style voice.
The same one that has taken us through documentary successes like Prohibition, The Dust Bowl, The West, The Roosevelts, The Vietnam War, The National Parks, The Mayo Clinic, and even Country Music.
We trust this voice that Burns calls “God’s stenographer.” Peter Coyote knows how to take this material home. He sells the narrative. His evocative work makes words into stories and characters by the way he bends each sentence. Vulture put it this way: “His calm, cowboy-around-a-campfire timbre is basically the voice of America, at least within the orbit of PBS.”
Now this famed narrator takes viewers through a heart-felt, and sometimes nostalgic, journey into the UFO subject.
Zeitgeist Moment
The greatest zeitgeist moment in this film is the treatment it gives to the September 1994 Ariel School incident in Ruwa, Zimbabwe. It’s a sensational case, experienced by dozens of witnesses, teachers and their school children. It’s a diverse group of children, white and black that plays out as so meaningful given our struggle with racial tensions today. The ETs, or whatever they were, did not appear to distinguish based on race.
There is an essential decency and honesty to their statements of these witnesses. Their testimony from the time is here and so is the look back the adult versions bring to the whole matter. And the emotional hook it gives the ending is pure humanity.
“What is he doing on Earth and what does he want with us?”
The point is that if you watch this testimony you know that everyone is telling the truth. This will challenge plenty of viewers to try to make sense out of the implications of what they say they interacted with. This is true about all the testimony inside The Phenomenon.
What To Leave In, What to Leave Out
The Phenomenon, as a title, promises a lot. The name itself is being widely used these days to reflect an entire menu of oddities that seem to manifest in our known world. On that menu, UFOs is one item only while extreme strangeness abounds in everything from tales from Skinwalker Ranch to other gnawing mysteries.
What you won’t find here are crop circles, animal mutilations or even abduction stories. If there is a bias to The Phenomenon, it is to the UFO phenomenon, one that is probably extraterrestrial, often nuts-and-bolts, and includes crash wreckage and other physical proof.
Fox has chosen an umbrella title but chosen to deliver most directly that which can be substantiated by independent corroboration and witness testimony. He doesn’t want to get into talking about sleep paralysis, laser surgery and hoaxers with wooden boards.
If ET doesn’t provide enough woo for you, this may not go far enough. Me, I’ve been looking for years for the one that will sell the Big Picture to all the people in my world who still wish I’d stop talking about this topic. It will prove to them, with its focused intentions, that something is going on. The intent is clear from the beginning as Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon says:
“These things are real. They’re here. This is happening now.”
What It Means in the Big Picture
Overall, this two-hour excursion is measured, thoughtful and confident. In reality, it needs to be ten times as long. Someday soon someone is going to make something of that length and power and, if they do it right, this film shows how mind-blowing that moment will be. Dream job. Where do I sign up?
Finally, let’s give director/producer/writer/reporter James Fox the last word, not on his documentary’s production, but on what it means.
“Twenty-five years into investigating unidentified aerial phenomena, I’m faced with the unavoidable fact they’re real, they’re global, and we’re potentially dealing with a form of consciousness that shares our world and impacts our lives in powerful ways. We may be dealing with an omni-present intelligence with the ability to manifest itself in a multitude of ways. It appears to be both nuts and bolts with a psychic element and may be sharing this planet and/or dimension with us. There’s also a piece of me that feels it may be all of the above; interplanetary visitation, time travelers, inter-dimensional etc.”
What Fox has placed into our digital consciousness as of October 6th consolidates the status of where we are as a society on the verge of admitting this great truth to ourselves. It does it in a couple of hours time. Imagine.
This economical, spare, poignant and mystifying telling is a great gift to truth.
Trail of the Saucers has written articles on some of the cases and issues raised in the documentary.
Here is the official trailer and the link to the website for The Phenomenon.