Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

I don't think there's anyone with a more diverse career than Ben Stein. Here is a man who is able to put on his resume actor, speech writer for Richard Nixon, and game show host, just to name a few. For the past few years, he's also been an activist, traveling to different Universities and speaking his mind about how he feels the theory of Intelligent Design is under attack. The new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (which Stein also co-wrote), tries to awaken us to what Stein feels is a crisis in the field of Science. How those who even dare to mention Intelligent Design in the classroom or in an article are either fired or blacklisted in the scientific community. You can tell that Stein and the filmmakers are passionate about what they're talking about, but the movie itself seems to take a more "pity parade" emotional approach, rather than an in-depth and informative approach.

Expelled mainly goes for the Michael Moore style of filmmaking, combining sound bytes with both campy and archival film clips, dry humor, popular music tied into the current topic, and even a brief animated segment to make its point. Just like a lot of Moore's work, the film does seem very one-sided at times. The first half of the film follows Stein as he tracks down various professors, journalists, and scientists who found themselves out of work or ridiculed simply because they either questioned the theory of Darwinism, or because they dared to write an article that looked at both sides of the Darwin/Intelligent Design argument, and were run out for simply mentioning the alternative theory. "Freedom is under attack", Stein proclaims early on, and he wants to bring what he feels is a great injustice to the attention of the people. It certainly is shocking to see and hear the stories of different people who found themselves persecuted for their beliefs, and even more so with those who simply just mentioned Intelligent Design, not saying anything for or against it, and found themselves fired. Stein certainly makes a good case, but the movie makes its first big mistake by making these people come across as victims, rather than giving them a forum to talk about what they have to say.

I walked into the film with an open mind, hoping to hear both sides of the argument. What the film mainly gives us for a long time are sob stories that may get us behind these teachers, writers, and scientists who found themselves in an unfair situation, but doesn't really dig deep enough into what they personally believe. We get a couple talking head quotes about how there's a wall in the scientific community (cue archival footage of the Berlin Wall), and if you're not on the right side of the wall, you're going to be persecuted. The movie does manage to find some level-headed speakers to support Intelligent Design, but those depicted supporting Darwinism are either portrayed as small-minded and arrogant, or displayed in such brief sound bytes that we feel like we're only getting part of their opinion. The Darwinist who gets the most screen time is Richard Dawkins, best known for writing the controversial book, The God Delusion. His extreme atheist views are often put side-by-side with the more sensible people in the film speaking for Intelligent Design. It gives the film a somewhat unbalanced feel, portraying most of the people speaking for one side as bullies, and those speaking on the others as victims.

The movie eventually takes an even more heavy-handed and exploitive approach when the subject of Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust is drawn in, and compared to the theory of Darwinism. This is when Expelled goes all out in the forced emotions approach, when Stein takes a personal tour of concentration camps and experimentation labs, while solemn music drones on the soundtrack and footage of Nazi war crimes are flashed on the screen. The way the material is handled is so manipulative and drags on for so long, it completely kills whatever momentum the film may have had up to that point. As mentioned earlier, the film also makes great use out of its Berlin Wall comparison, which also seems a bit contrived at times, especially near the end when the movie keeps on cutting back and forth between Ben Stein giving a lecture to some students, and Ronald Reagan giving a stirring speech about freedom before a cheering crowd. The attention is drawn to Stein, not the issue at hand, at this point. The movie keeps on trying to draw out attention with film clips and other attention grabbing methods that first-time filmmaker, Nathan Frankowski, sometimes loses the point.

I want to stress that this review does not express my personal feelings on the subject at hand. I think there is a lot of room for discussion, and this movie is bound to bring forth some interesting conversation. That being said, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed unfortunately winds up living up to the last part of the title a little bit. Instead of letting the viewers make up their own mind, it manipulates and tries to grab our attention whenever it can, and sometimes winds up drawing attention to itself rather than the issue its talking about. I was hoping for a much more open-ended and thought provoking film, and while I certainly found a film whose heart was in the right place, I was left sometimes wondering where its mind was. This is a well-made film with a lot of positive aspects, but it's not the movie on Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism that it should have been.

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