Most movies want their audience to suspend disbelief. “About a Hero” would rather keep it close at hand. “Viewers are advised to be cautious in trusting its visual and auditory components,” a disclaimer runs across the screen near the start of Polish director Piotr Winiewicz’s irreverent exercise in AI storytelling – a self-consciously opener , controversial for this year’s IDFA documentary festival, not least. as many would not classify it as a documentary at all. Wrapping an imagined (and gleefully incoherent) crime mystery around a talking-head discussion about artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity, this seemingly hybrid exercise offers little to reassure viewers that any one of its components is more “real” than another. . As a feature film stunt, it has some cleverness, but it doesn’t live up to the ideas and arguments.

Still, the brilliant conceptual tricks and big-name participation in “About a Hero” should be enough to turn distributors’ heads as the film makes its way through the documentary circuit — even if the biggest of those names isn’t really on board. . Not in person, anyway. Inspired by Werner Herzog’s claim that “a computer won’t make a film as good as mine in 4,500 years,” Winiewicz trained an AI model entirely on the venerable director’s body of work and used them to both to write a fictional story of an inexplicable. death in a German factory town and fashion a facsimile of Herzog to narrate it. Named Kaspar (surname Hauser, presumably), the model is, like much AI creation, close to genuine, but strangely unhinged in all manner of particularities – starting with its deep imitation of those distinctively husky Herzog tones, which is barely at the level. of a party trick impression.

More from Variety

That’s kind of the point: Almost an exercise in artificial intelligence advocacy, About a Hero seems to revel in its unpleasantness, posing a challenge to Herzog’s dismissal while doing it justice as a narrative — not in entirely Kaspar’s creation, but adapted. de Winiewicz from the model output—gets progressively confused. As such, the film may work less effectively in isolation than as a literal conversation starter, either in a festival environment or attached to a post-screening Q&A.

Divided into chapters that do not follow a logical numerical order, the story focuses on an unseen figure: Dorem Clery, an unremarkable employee at a kitchen appliance factory in the fictional German town of Getunkirchenberg, who is found dead under circumstances that, either due to a wrong game or AI storytelling error, never quite make sense. He had apparently been working on an enigmatic project called only “The Machine,” itself a symbol of AI development and perhaps somehow responsible for his death. The film’s investigations on this front, however, are repeatedly sidetracked by a focus on Clery’s widow, Eleonore (Imme Beccard), who channels her grief into interactions with household appliances that ultimately devolve into a literal form of technolust.

“If, in your mind, this is clear and conclusive and watchable, you’re out of your mind,” Herzog fake-hisses as Eleonore fumbles with a toaster — not the first time “About a Hero” has he says on purpose. flawed construction, in a joke that wears thin by the film’s close. (It’s better when Winiewicz just lets viewers figure out the errors themselves, as with the repeated misspellings of the word “police” in the film’s procedural portions.) On the documentary side of the equation, the film’s interviewees—including Stephen Fry and cultural critic Charles Mudede — offers mostly thoughtful but noncommittal musings on AI, doing little to influence or shape the vague thesis of the movie. Eight years ago, Herzog’s documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World reflected more substantively on humanity’s impending struggle with its own digital innovations, albeit with far less metatextual trickery.

“I don’t mind knocking the idea that humans are the be-all and end-all of intelligence,” says Mudede. But “About a Hero” doesn’t really engage with the possibilities of AI as a post-human construct, not least since its own dalliances with technology are vetted and tempered by the filmmakers, whether in the name of reason, irony, or entertainment. . The film is almost certainly more watchable for that degree of human involvement – it’s beautifully shot and designed, with a wildly funny supporting performance from Vicky Krieps as the sleazy reporter investigating the Clery case. Still, if it’s a challenge at all, it’s a winking, cautious one that no doubt goes out of its way to reassure viewers that life and art as we know it will endure for a while yet, if not necessarily for 4,500 years.

The best of the variety

Sign up for Variety’s newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitterand Instagram.