Eternal Vanity

The Immortalists takes an intriguing premise—two scientists and their separate quests to end death and aging—and squanders it with one of the least likable documentary subjects to ever grace the screen (outside of, say, serial killers and genocidal maniacs). Aubrey de Grey, a scientist with a wonderful beard and an apparently ironclad liver, comes across like the third most self-satisfied prick in the world after Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

The other scientist, Bill Andrews, is an American who sounds like Billy Bob Thornton without the accent. Like de Grey, he seems to be in a state of arrested development, and the excuse he gives for breaking off five engagements—that his work is driving him—is laughable. (It’s his ego.)

These are people who think the best thing for society is to live forever. Nah, they think they’re worthy of immortality.

Maybe Andrews and de Grey are paragons of humanity. But directors David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg wouldn’t let you know it; they’re more interested in the personalities of these guys than the science, and their personalities are drab (Andrews) or insufferably hubristic (de Grey).

When de Grey isn’t stripping naked by the road for an afternoon fuck with his wife as if they’re goddamn John Lennon and Yoko Ono, he’s in California with one of his girlfriends, living a polyamorous life that his wife says “is so not my scene.” This is the guy in charge of living forever?

Directed by David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg

Jean Cocteau Cinema

NR
78 min.