'Mister Organ' review: Meet New Zealand's most dangerously annoying man

Journalist and filmmaker David Farrier - who, in a nod to the modesty of his documentaries, only refers to himself as the old on-screen - has a certain affinity for sinister crackpots . "Tickled," "My Scientology Movie," and the new "Mister Organ" reflect a warm but unaffected man who is constrained by the dark underbelly of seemingly benign people and institutions, and can't help but be sucked into their shady personal dramas. At this point in his career, Farrier looks like a kid who keeps getting his head stuck between the balusters of a staircase because he wants to put on a show by ripping it out.

That's not to say that his films aren't enjoyable, or that their subjects aren't deserving of the attention Farrier gives them, only that it's getting harder and harder to shake off the suspicion that he's digging into them. same rabbit holes he films himself falling. Farrier's latest feature - a signature first-person exercise that finds him "stumbling" into a story that consumes several years of his life for our amusement - begins with some parking mishegoss at an antique shop in London. Auckland before transforming into an intimate portrait of the toxic narcissist who terrorizes half of New Zealand.

The man's name is Michael Organ, and just as Farrier says 'you pay soul tax for every minute you spend with him', this meandering documentary proved those words to be true without telling them. shadow of a doubt. But when Farrier goes on to lament that "I'm trapped with him because I have to make a movie, right?", I didn't immediately know if that was meant to be a rhetorical question. The sunk cost fallacy notwithstanding, Farrier is not required to make a film about Organ (however moral there is to sharing this story for the benefit of future victims of 'Organ, this movie is a little too self-centered to flesh it out in any meaningful way).

While Farrier is extremely likable - and his subject the opposite of that in every way - the documentary he made on Organ inadvertently complicates the question of who is trapped with whom, or if anyone is. one is trapped at all. The finished product often looks more like watching a tense pas de deux than someone clinging to their prey. It can be a compelling dynamic on its own (and an eye-opening way to expose how each man works for his very different ends), but the ambiguity also dampens the project's journalistic value, sometimes to the point that "Mister Organ" plays less like gripping investigative reporting rather than a deserving hit about a dangerously annoying guy Farrier knows, dislikes for good reason, and really wants you to hate him too.



Likeness for Mister Organ is never on the menu, but the more we learn about him, the less special he becomes. That's why Farrier's film is the most compelling at first, while its namesake remains a mystery shrouded in ridicule. It all starts when Jillian Bashford, the owner of Bashford Antiques, hires her "lawyer" - Michael Organ - to begin aggressively squeezing all the cars parked outside her store overnight and charging their owners hundreds of dollars to remove the boots. . This is exactly the kind of wacky, low-key crime that Farrier lives for, and so he decides to start digging. "Five years ago I started writing what I thought was a very simple, original story," the filmmaker intones on the voiceover track, "but here I am half a decade later, still trying to make sense of it all."

Farrier doesn't seem too disappointed about this, but it's not like everything went to plan. I'm sure he was happy to get the clamp law changed (which inspired Bashford to close his store in response) but with hindsight being 20/20 he probably regrets stealing the Bashford sign Antiques after closing. It was then that Organ sued him for theft. It was then that Organ clung to Farrier's life like a parasite and refused to let go, even after the filmmaker began to reciprocate.

The details of Organ's dealings aren't particularly interesting - there's something about a stolen boat and a string of angry ex-roommates and even the occasional mention of a local terrorist - but the details are never so important to a delusional narcissist like him. What Farrier Knows All Along, But Dances For...