Liam Le Guillou's documentary "A Cursed Man", available on Kanopy (thanks public library streaming services), follows the documentary filmmaker on his quest to get cursed by practitioners of dark arts. While most sane people actively try to avoid hexes, jinxes, and supernatural misfortune, Le Guillou travels around asking witches, shamans, and voodoo priests to put the whammy on him.
The premise is fascinating in that train-wreck sort of way. Le Guillou genuinely needs to be convinced that magic exists, and apparently the only way his skeptical mind will accept supernatural phenomena is if something genuinely awful happens to him via a curse put on him. He travels the globe looking for a shaman or a witch who would put a curse on him. Many sincere practitioners try to dissuade him, but that is not stopping Le Guillou.
As Voodoo priest Divine Prince Ty Emmecca astutely observes, “The norm is to be cursed. And so [what you’re doing] sounds, without being disrespectful, almost entitled," It's a fair point – here's this guy demanding bad mojo when most people are just trying to get by without additional (evil) cosmic interference.
What saves the documentary from becoming a complete vanity project is the quality of the conversations Le Guillou has with his subjects. The practitioners he meets are invested, honest, and well-intentioned people who take their craft seriously. Their insights into belief systems, spirituality, and the nature of reality make for genuinely thought-provoking viewing. These aren't carnival fortune tellers or charlatans – they're people with deep convictions about forces beyond our current scientific understanding.
Still, there's something oddly self-indulgent about the whole enterprise. Le Guillou reminds me of a male Elizabeth Gilbert, though thankfully without the insufferable privilege tourism of Eat-Pray-Love. Like Gilbert, he's a white person with enough time and resources to go soul-searching across continents, but at least his journey involves potential supernatural consequences rather than just some trite self indulgent and shallow observations we could have come up with, without leaving the confines of our couches.
The most puzzling aspect is Le Guillou's insistence on curses rather than blessings. Multiple practitioners suggest that positive magic might be equally convincing proof of supernatural forces, but he's adamant that only bad things will make him a believer. It's an oddly masochistic approach to spiritual exploration.
Despite its self-centered premise, *A Cursed Man* succeeds as an exploration of belief, faith, and the human need for meaning beyond the material world. Le Guillou puts his own well-being on the line for his documentary, which takes a certain kind of commitment. The result is an intriguing look at what lies beyond conventional understanding, even if the journey feels unnecessarily focused on inviting trouble.
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