Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Tabarnouche As McLuhan's rear-view-mirror analogy predicts, today's world-view of the present has been shifting from one framed by 19th-century referents to one derived from post-1945 premises. In a few years the Reagan/Thatcher/Gorbachev-Bush41/Yeltsin-Clinton/Blair era will supplant it.The image in the mirror may indeed be closer than it appears in the convex passenger-side mirror, but our gaze is still firmly, axiomatically retrospective. Human beings have a distinct collective bias for — to paraphrase McLuhan — drawing conclusions about the present from the roiling wake behind the cruise ship rather than from the endless stretch of unknown waters between prow and horizon.The acceptance of extreme wealth concentration, of corruption of the electoral process, of propaganda designed to ensure irremediable political polarization, of the utilitarian economic objectification of human activity, of perduring ideology-based terrorism, of impotence before human-caused climate change and unchecked population growth — this conditioned resignation is a feature of society we now take for granted. Yet it was still sinking its roots when McLuhan's Wake came out in 2002.Does this make McLuhan's Wake irrelevant? On the contrary.What does obscure McLuhan's brilliant synthesis, at least as portrayed in this film, is the screenplay's tortoise-like pacing. Contrary to the revelations about the nature of chaos and social upheaval that McLuhan finds in Edgar Allan Poe's maelstrom allegory, the film plods on for 93 minutes at a soporific crawl worthy of a long, mediocre Italian opera. Had McLuhan been alive when the film was made, and had he not been able to punch up the story line exponentially, he'd almost certainly have hurled himself overboard into the maelstrom — if only to feel his synapses fire again.The cascading mass hypnosis with "virtual reality," the paranoia that attends the demise of privacy, and the impoverishment of human relations bequeathed by social media (McLuhan's "global village") — as social innovations become mutations, they illustrate McLuhan's Laws of Media: Enhancement becomes its opposite, Obsolescence, much as automobile-based mobility morphed into dysfunctional, perpetually congested urban immobility. This shift likely means that McLuhan's "the medium is the message" is due for a resurgence before finally receding into revered historical curiosity.To dismiss this film because of stylistic shortcomings would be to blind oneself to the insights of a genius on a par with William Blake, Buckminister Fuller, Chomsky, Atwood, Jobs, Assange, Zuckerburg.

MallratClerk Q: Why did Hitler kill himself? A: McLuhan's WakeIn all my years as a person I have never wanted to kill myself more then the times I spent watching this movie. Q: What do Chinese prisons use to torture prisoners? A: McLuhan's WakeThe word crap has been thrown around a lot these days and I believe that the word "crap" was created to describe the movie "McLuhan's Wake." The last reviewer was obviously high on crack when he wrote his ass-kissing review. NEWS FLASH! You can't kiss a dead man's ass. It decomposed several years ago. You will just be kissing bone. You think that you're all that, with your made up diploma. I never knew that Wal-Mart had a major university.But I digress. McLuhan's Wake is the equivalent of someone stomping on your testicles for an hour and a half then proceeding to cut off your shaft. Can someone please make sure that this bastards coffin is nailed shut so that he doesn't crawl his way back out. I can't wait for the sequel: McLuhan's Wake 2: Wake Harder

Swift-12 Fascinating clash of philosophy, classical studies and Pop Culture -- especially if you recognize the need to keep Pop Culture under scrutiny, instead of just letting it massage your brain like the narcotic it's designed to be.The film capsulizes a number of McLuhan's conclusions about Media. Wittingly and unwittingly we've created and surrounded ourselves with this electronic environment -- but McLuhan also recognized that like any other tool (language included) it is an extension of our own physical selves. And like so many other tools we are also transformed by our own creations.The important thing is to be cognizant of all this jive b.s. McLuhan began his public discourse on Media because his freshman students couldn't relate to Literature. I guess he began opening their eyes FIRST to the cacophonous culture they were blindly walking through, and once aroused *then* they became receptive to Wordsworth and Milton. (Though some were cheesed off that he didn't test them on Coca-Cola and Batman after spending so much lecture time on it.)McLuhan spoke often in metaphors, which perhaps isn't a very clinical approach to codifying a new science. But it seems the man never forgot a thing he read or saw -- and thus Poe's "Descent into the Maelstrom" became symbolic for the dynamic fractured environment we've created for ourselves. It also has become a metaphor for his own career. Although his celebrity had fallen into obscurity, his ideas still influence those who've never heard of him or his Four Laws. I think his star will continue to rise again until -- *pop* -- look what's resurfaced outta that whirlpool.McLuhan is more timely than ever, in an Age where what we experience is less and less an observation of the Real World and more and more an interface with manufactured concoction. I'm not convinced though -- need to surf the Internet a little more to look into this.

jsangspar I'd only heard of Marshall McLuhan very vaguely before - I knew the very basis of his media theories, and had seen the Heritage Canada ads that used to be shown every 15 minutes - so I was very interested to see a film about the man, since he had had seemingly little impact on the world but was apparently an important Canadian figure.Turns out he wasn't much more than a guy who had theories with very little factual basis and a knack for media manipulation.The problem with this documentary is that its format is based on McLuhan's four laws of media, four questions that must (supposedly) be asked of every medium to understand them, and is thus completely in agreement with McLuhan's fairly vaporous theories and completely advocates everything he's ever said. While the idea of a documentary sans bias is essentially impossible, and I've enjoyed documentaries which take sides I don't agree with, the foundation of McLuhan's Wake is too essentially incompatible with reality for me to appreciate.If you agree with McLuhan's theories and don't mind fairly frequent, vaguely related references to Poe's story about the maelstrom, you'll probably like this. If you don't, you'll shake your head in disbelief and leave 90 minutes poorer.