Depending on your state of mind, a nearly four-hour documentary about Elon Musk might sound exciting or excruciating.
For those prone to idolizing the richest man on earth, a portrait crafted by the prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney comes preloaded with assumptions of negative bias, since Musk attacked Gibney in posts on his social media platform, X, even before the film began production. Gibney acknowledges this near the beginning of “Musk”(in theaters), which he narrates; after the film’s premiere in Venice, the trillionaire spent several hours calling him names on X. It’s safe to say that the subject of “Musk” is not a fan.
But Gibney’s no fan of his subject either. “How has Elon Musk assumed so much power, and why did we give it to him?” he asks early on. Musk — whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and the satellite service Starlink — refused to be interviewed, so Gibney took an unusual anthropological approach: He and his research team assembled an archive of Musk’s many public appearances and statements. They then created a computer-generated, A.I.-enhanced avatar that “speaks” directly to the camera in the real man’s voice and words. (I’d say it was photorealistic, but the avatar seems to have undergone a glow-up.)
This proxy character fits into Gibney’s overarching metaphor. He posits that Musk, who brags about his video gaming skills (though that appears to be mostly hot air), views the world as a game to be won and most people in it as either enemies to be taken down or expendable nonplayer characters. This largely checks out; Musk has spoken several times about his belief in simulation theory — the idea that we’re probably living in a simulation created by some greater intelligence — and if the world isn’t real, then why not treat it as a game?
The first half of “Musk” is mainly biographical, the tale of how he became the way he is. Gibney interviews Musk’s collaborators, who outline the sometimes dubious or outright deceitful ways that they say he built his reputation as a techno-genius and brilliant businessman. What emerges is a portrait of the entrepreneur as something of a steamroller and sleight-of-hand magician, willing (by their account) to take credit for things he didn’t do. After a 10-minute intermission, the film steers toward more recent Musk activity, especially DOGE, the government cost-cutting effort he led, and his turn toward hard-right politics.
The strongest and most damning parts of “Musk” come in conversations with two women. A raw interview with Justine Musk, his first ex-wife, gives shape to the mogul’s early years in business and suggests that he was domineering from the start. At their wedding, he told her he was the “alpha male.” She says that when they fought, he always found a way to make her feel as if she was in the wrong. Through their relationship, she says, she learned the word “gaslighting.”
The other revealing source is Ashley St. Clair, the formerly conservative influencer and mother of his youngest child. She talks about her two-year relationship with Musk and explains the way he treats the four mothers of his 14 children, which includes N.D.A.s and a child support payment that St. Clair said shrank by 60 percent after she criticized him publicly. She gives a glimpse into his ideology, too: According to her, he once said in a message that they should have a “legion of children before the civil war.”
These conversations are so revealing because they fill in some of what goes on behind the scenes and at least make a stab at explaining his psychology. The movie searches for an explanation for his business and political moves, particularly in recent years. Was it his childhood? His need to be admired? Alleged drug use? Has he gotten so internet-brained, so to speak, that his view of the world has grown increasingly warped?
The movie doesn’t find an answer, or rather, it finds too many to be conclusive. While the questions Gibney poses early on — how did Musk get so powerful and why did we allow it? — are good ones, they’re not really answered by this movie. Some of it is implied: In the era of Silicon Valley founders, Americans have idolized the erratic, sometimes cruel genius, and for even longer, we’ve given men like him a pass.
The great strength of “Musk” is its deep, comprehensive research. Yet by the end, I hadn’t learned much about him that I didn’t already know, thanks to reams of media coverage throughout his career and especially in recent years.
What the film doesn’t do, though perhaps it’s impossible, is connect the man to the culture around him, seeing him as a manifestation of some deeper societal decay. I found myself wishing, ironically enough, that the film had been longer, able to give a more comprehensive idea of his place in history, as with Ezra Edelman’s terrific 2016 film “O.J.: Made in America,” or even Gibney films like “Going Clear,” on Scientology. If indeed the question is why we allowed Musk all this power, then surely the answer lies partly in us.
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