Through interviews with friends, family and colleagues, we learn Crowley is a chilled iconoclast. He is as dedicated to his vision as he is to his family. To raise funds so he can write his script, Crowley makes a trailer for a film that doesn't yet exist, markets it and raises more money than he hopes for.
His concept gathers momentum in social media, the project takes on its own life and Hollywood moguls agree to stump up the $30 million. Crowley is filmed at a demonstration filming segments with real-life, far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones who is attuned to Crowley's politics.
The people are ready for A Gray State but it is more than a film, says Crowley. It's a warning. Crowley is a voice for the movement, says a colleague. In Crowley's film, the people fight back, there are executions, including a beheading.
In a sense, A Gray State is a documentary of two halves. Crowley's mission to create his film, and the dystopian conditions he recreates, using willing citizens rather than trained actors, dominates the first part of the documentary.
The focus then shifts into a fascinating psychological study. As we learn more about Komel though interviews in the second part of the documentary, her husband's film becomes the background to the change in their relationship.
Komel is independent but always a cheerleader for her husband's mission. Crowley's controlling behaviour and growing paranoia becomes more evident. His storyboard — a near obsessive map of coloured notes pinned to a wall — connect complex elements of the story. At various points in the documentary, Crowley talks about where the making of the film is up to.
“This scene is where there is supposed to be a meeting between the hero and the villain,” he says at one point.
Later, he brings out a supernatural element but asks himself if he has established it early enough. It doesn't matter because the device of the parallel plot in the film, and in the documentary, establishes the theme at that point. Like The Blair Witch Project, the cinema verite naturalism in A Gray State is strong enough to leave doubt as to whether the Netflix film is a regular movie, but with an edge, or an actual documentary.
The post-modernish device of the storyboard, the odd twist of the supernatural element and a conceit in the denouement means the film ends a little messily. Despite expectations of some in the documentary, people are unlikely to discuss the significance of the conceit. Obsessives will, however, freeze-frame the doco as the camera hovers over songs Crowley has listed on a music streaming platform for a soundtrack we don't get to hear, and recreate it on Spotify.
The choices are surprisingly ordinary for such a visionary and serve to either underline Crowley's role ultimately as a tragic anti-hero; the ordinariness of even remarkable people's lives, or to give obsessives something to really churn over.
The latter worked.
