A Gray State Explores How the Politics of Paranoia Destroyed A Young Family
In January 2015, David Crowley, an aspiring filmmaker and Iraq War veteran, was found dead along with his wife and young daughter in their suburban home in Minnesota. The death was a shock to the community and to the couples’ families, who couldn’t imagine who could’ve executed their loved ones so brutally. But the crime also caught the interest of the alt-right community, who had followed the rise and subsequent fall of Crowley, best known for his unfinished film project, Gray State.
Gray State gained a substantial following after Crowley released a trailer for the project, one that showed a bleak future for America, dissolving into a dystopian police state where civil liberties were stripped away by the government. Gray State tapped into many of the fears laden in conspiracy theory communities, such as FEMA camps and the idea that the U.S. government was planning a full-scale war with its citizens who, after being stripped of their guns, would be rendered helpless. In some respects, Crowley’s vision felt as timely and vital to the libertarian community as The Handmaid’s Tale might feel to many in the liberal community today. Gray State was more than a film to them, it was a warning of a future that still might be prevented if enough people sat up and paid attention.
In the documentary A Gray State, we meet Crowley through a dizzying array of media unearthed by director Erik Nelson. Even in the age of social media, where the most minute and mundane are meticulously documented for a life lived on the internet, Crowley’s output — 13,000 photographs and hundreds of hours of video — feels excessive. “It’s the selfie culture; anything anyone does is significant and should be shared, and if we share enough we might be famous on YouTube,” Nelson tells us in an interview during the Tribeca Film Festival. But even still, he was surprised by the videos and how Crowley took care to document things he felt were important — his daughter describing a bloody scrape or his wife claiming she had contact with a demon — and framing them the way a filmmaker would.
But as Nelson explains, the excessive footage didn’t just provide insight into the lives of Crowley and his family. It ultimately explained their tragic end, which was not the result of a government conspiracy to keep Crowley quiet but instead a tragic murder-suicide committed by a man under enormous pressure. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the unexpected success of Gray State’s trailer and the public clamoring for Crowley to deliver a full-length film begin to chip away at him. But the onslaught of “behind-the-scenes” material of Crowley’s home life also show the subtle dysfunction in his relationship with his wife, Komel, which feels very controlling. It is something reinforced by her business partner, who often lamented that she felt as if her friend wore two faces, her own and the one her husband wanted her to wear.
https://nonfics.com/a-gray-state-review-3e732f9d8d68
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