Liza Warner

Professor Benjamin Good

RC 1000 Expository Writing

Spring 2021

Behind the Curve

In the documentary Behind the Curve, the opening line is, "You think you are on a globe

spinning at a thousand miles an hour. That globe is spinning around the Sun at 60,000-plus miles

an hour. That solar system is flying sideways through the galaxy at half a million miles an hour,

and that galaxy is going through the rest of the universe. At millions of miles an hour. And you

feel nothing. In reality, you are actually in a giant planetarium, slash terrarium, slash soundstage,

slash Hollywood backlot that is so big that you and everyone you know and everyone you have

ever known never figured it out" - Mark Sargent. I think this is a critical opening line for the

documentary because it explains the purpose of the whole film right in the first minute. Not to

mention it is such an attention grabber and immediately gets you thinking. This film is about flat

earth and how a group of people all come together who share a mutual belief. Behind the Curve

leads you down the pathway Mark Sargent and many others took to find the truth of the flat

earth. I believe the film's intended audience is those who are non-believers that the earth is flat.

When you start the documentary, it opens up with different leaders in the flat earth

community. Looking for the credibility and bias in the film is not so hard. In my opinion, there is

little to no bias in the film. This is proven through the variety of people in the film who are

voicing their opinions on the events throughout the film. Scientists from various fields are also
presented. I think this gives the film a lot of credibility overall because they are highly educated

professionals who are really aware of what they are talking about and know that people look to

them for answers. This also speaks for the filmmaker's credibility to include people of such a

profession in a documentary focused on what most of the world believes to be a conspiracy.

Commonly throughout the film you will notice that you are seeing both sides to everything. Both

sides of the “flat earth” theory are being shown and you aren’t being forced to see it as only one

way, giving the audience the opportunity to form their own opinions.

The director appeals to the audience in many different ways. The way in which emotions

are appealed to is very clever in my opinion. There are several funny moments to assist in

keeping the audience engaged while also some serious ones that really get the audience thinking

such as the line mentioned in the intro. You can also look at how the director appeals to the

values that people share despite what side of beliefs in flat earth they are on. I think this was a

great tactic in tugging on the audience’s emotions and making them feel more connected to the

people in the film.

The director and filmmaker do a great job of keeping the film logical and consistent with

time. It is easy to understand what is happening throughout the film. After realizing when the

film was made (2018), the scene showing the solar eclipse occurring in the film really showed

me the thought put into this film and how its ideas related to current events at the time. The film

remains easy to follow from beginning to end and time is being kept track of in several instances

so there is no confusion in the order of events. I think the director does a great job showing

historical events in the timeline of the film, from the start of the Flat Earth Movement to the end.
They conducted many different experiments in an attempt to prove that the earth was flat. When

they did not work, they moved along and kept up with what was happening.

In conclusion, the filmmaker and director do a great job of making the film from credible

sources, to appealing to the audience, to keeping up with the timeline of events. The visual

element and music are what put the film's experience over the top I believe. One example that

puts everything together is in the final scene when they are doing their final test to prove that flat

earth is real. On the screen, you see what they are looking for and what will happen to confirm

that it is true. The last words you hear are "that's interesting." The film stops, the music starts,

and it is a mystery solved.

 Works Cited

Clark, Daniel J, director. Behind the Curve. Netflix, 2018, www.netflix.com/title/81015076.