All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1999) [3 0f 3]

In the final chapter of this visionary trilogy, genetics, computation, greed, and conflict to reveal how modern science and technology reinforce de-humanising narratives—and what that means for power and freedom.

Curtis opens in the 1960s Congo, using the iconic image of space‑sent monkeys to segue into a meditation on evolutionary biology and the rise of the “selfish gene.” Figures like William Hamilton and George R. Price become central—influential scientists whose mathematical models implied that human behavior could be reduced to genetic self‑interest. In Curtis’s telling, this reductionism paved the way for a world view in which everything—individuals, societies, even geopolitical struggles—is interpreted through the narrow lens of competition and survival.

Curtis then expands the frame to examine the human toll of this ideology. He traces how the global scramble for minerals—especially copper—used in electronics fueled conflicts in the Congo, turning our technological dependency into a vector for violence. The message is unstated but chilling: the gadgets we prize are built on suffering, driven by a worldview that sees people as atoms in machine systems.

Stylistically, Curtis remains at full tilt: his hypnotic video montage—shifting from tribal imagery to biotech laboratories to corporate boardrooms—creates a disorienting atmosphere. Accompanied by eerie music and a steady voiceover, the sequence feels less documentary and more cinematic essay—“like…a soothing, disturbing art project,” in the words of Den of Geek.

Even the transitions between history, science, tragedy, and philosophy are treated more like provocative images than scholarly connections. This approach is his signature—and it amplifies the urgency of the ideas.

Yet viewers may find too many loose threads. Curtis links genetics, capitalism, conflict, and technology in sweeping strokes that sometimes strain coherence. As Den of Geek observes, “the connecting ties…are sometimes a little tenuous”.

He dives from Darwinian reductionism to resource imperialism without always grounding the viewer in evidence or detailed sourcing. Still, this is intentional: Curtis isn’t revealing hidden archives—he’s mapping a spiritual disorder in modernity—a condition of seeing everyone and everything as mechanistic parts in a machine.

That emotional and moral urgency remains the work’s greatest strength. The underlying sense is that our current faith in the data-driven, tech-driven world has muted our humanity. We’ve embraced a worldview that reduces everything to function, control, and profit, eroding both compassion and complexity. In Curtis’s vision, we’ve not liberated ourselves—we’ve been enfolded in a system that watches over us, while we lose sight of what it truly means to be human.

Final Thoughts: "The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey” may frustrate analytical viewers—but it delivers as a feverish finale to Curtis’s trilogy. Its intimate portraits of scientists, its stark imagery of violence, and its philosophical critique of computational reductionism come together into a haunting crescendo. For those willing to accept his poetic, non-linear style, it offers a sober warning: that beneath our screens and systems lie layers of exploitation, assumption, and misplaced trust.

Curtis’s film is not medicine but a signal flare—less about solutions than about jolting us into awareness. If the series is asking us to wake up to the cost of our digital dreams, then this last installment reaches a deeply unsettling conclusion: that the levers behind our machines—and the myths we build around them—might just have primed us to lose our capacity for empathy, justice, and genuine connection.