I think some of the best documentaries are those that make you ask yourself if the whole thing is a put-on. Here we have a fearless explorer who hates the jungles and is too inept to consult archaeological lore or maps or weather patterns. We have a film crew which bogs down the Long March with vast amounts of filming gear. We have a succession of guides (the gonzo Col. Kilgore wannabee who has surveyed the terrain on hallucinogenic over-flights, the aged man drunk on metaphysics, and the Indian who craves urban life) whose information is always false (sometimes outrageously). It is a recipe for disaster, a quixotic trip into the heart of darkness which unglues every mind and every alliance. The serial foolishness of the explorer is also our narration. His tapes bounce manically from loving to hating members of the team, from delusional optimism to crushing defeatism, and from unwarranted certainty to paranoid skepticism--sometimes within the space of a few sentences. The Film Crew sometimes creates tangents intended to make a better film. Everyone suffers from a sort of monomanic blindness that prevents them from absorbing the sheer folly of the overarching enterprise. Along the way, the minutiae and the obstacles are just too weird to be believed.