Musk

Fans of strong-scented perfumes will be disappointed to learn that director Alex Gibney’s Musk is actually about Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man. Other viewers will be impressed with the scope and scale of this riveting documentary which flies by despite running at almost four hours – 235 minutes including a 10-minute intermission – and gives plenty of insight into who he really is.

Many will already have formed certain ideas about Musk from his actions – if nothing else his $288 million donation to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign indicates where he stands politically, alongside his bullish Twitter takeover and subsequent reinstatement of banned right wing accounts. Gibney brings detailed analysis of Musk’s relationship with Trump and how he turned Twitter into X, along with a concerning final section about his foray into AI. Musk refused to participate in the documentary, so his words are culled from existing quotes and spoken by an AI avatar, though there’s also a huge amount of archive footage of him being interviewed, overseeing rocket-building at Space X, unveiling new Tesla models and so forth. Many key people in his life are interviewed on camera, including creepy father Errol and mother Maye, ex-wife Justine Musk, ex-girlfriend Ashley St Clair, alongside former employees and journalists who’ve covered his work on the tech beat.

Musk has a bonkers belief in creating a ‘legion’ of children before a civil war erupt

There are many staggering facts in Musk alongside a rich trove of anecdotal evidence. To chose just one: he has at least 14 children (and, likely many more). Musk has a bonkers belief in creating a ‘legion’ of children before a civil war erupts. Does the world really need more of his offspring populating it? Testimony from Justine Musk and St Clair suggest he’s a poor father and a worse husband, regardless of the level of business acumen he has. That too is debatable: he has a habit of taking far more credit than he deserves, except where there are catastrophic problems with products his company produces, such as the Tesla auto-pilot functionality that has caused at least 65 deaths. 

While Musk himself is only ever funny unintentionally, there are some laughs here. His ludicrous idea about colonising Mars is debunked with wit, while there is something grimly amusing about how he began running the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), his replacement of the United States Digital Service. Firing many experienced staff and filling it with early twentysomethings was something he had already done at Twitter. The amusement soon fades: spending cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in developing countries.

Some may already have had more than enough of Elon. For those who can stomach it, this is a fascinating, occasionally despairing watch.

Musk premiered at the Venice Film Festival.