But, come to think of it. The word essay probably has a different meaning to me, than to native speakers of the English language, who’d have to write countless essays at school. I use it in the sense Montaigne invented the genre; to me the essay is a personal piece, in which the writer reflects on the world in ways not done before. An experiment if you like. Which says nothing about the content.

This is totaly untrue. The facts revealed in this documentary (and it is a pure documentary, of the type only the British can make) are the core of the film; what it looks like is irrelevant. The facts, about the torture, the philosophy and its adherents are what makes this such a compelling piece. The fact that the archive film is also stunning in terms of what they managed to find, should not distract you from the information being conveyed. That is, if you can watch something AND listen to a lecture at the same time, you should be as blown away by it as if it had been just a narrators voice reading a thesis.