Musk

What makes “Musk” such a lacerating and important watch, grounded in Alex Gibney’s supremely insightful but user-friendly mastery of the documentary form, is that it takes this flamboyant and in many ways elusive figure, with his tech ambitions and cosmic dreams and malignant megalomania, and puts him together, letting us see how one chapter of his life led to the next, and how the Musk dream wasn’t always so grandiose.

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

Simply as a character study, though, Musk is fascinating. As a tale of modern business, it’s revealing. And as a warning about our future, it’s terrifying.

Gibney’s excellent film covers a lot of ground in its extraordinary story.

Musk preserves a much-needed shock value, not just because of the concentration of horrors cued in quick succession and amplified by Pemberton’s anxiety-inducing music, but because of how clear a picture it forms of our near future—shaped by the ever-unstable, grubby hands of this one man.

The film’s extensive use of post-2025 material sears by way of immediacy, turning so-called archival footage into something barely cooled from the present, fresh enough to sting like salt in an open wound.

At a mammoth four hours in length, Alex Gibney’s Musk meanders through its reconstruction of a man whose controversies are all largely known. With a saga built step-by-step, its story spans a mile in width, but digs only inches deep, delivering infamous factoids about the famous CEO without illuminating their layers.