Behind the Curve

The documentary goes in among people who believe the earth is flat: YouTube broadcasters, conference halls, a community that has found each other. The director does not mock them; he listens to why they are there, and the answer is mostly not science but exclusion and a wish to belong somewhere. The most discussed part is two experiments. Bob Knodel's team buys a twenty thousand dollar laser gyroscope and measures a drift of fifteen degrees an hour, which is exactly what a rotating globe would produce. They put the device inside a sealed cylinder and repeat it, and get the same result. The second is the film's closing scene. Jeran Campanella cuts holes at the same height in two sheets of foam and sets them about six kilometres apart; on a flat earth the light should pass through. It does not appear. The camera records that and the film ends there. Daniel J. Clark directed. It went out on Netflix in February 2019. The real subject is not the flat earth but how a belief repairs itself: both experiments refute the claim, and nobody changes their mind. Who it is for: anyone who likes documentaries about conspiracy communities and the psychology of belief. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a scientific rebuttal. The film does not argue, in places it stands too close to its subjects, and it ends without stating any conclusion.