Origins of Human Aggression: The Other Story
2005 · 50m · Canada
Directed by Jean-Pierre Maher
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Researchers from several fields debate whether human aggression is rooted in biology or upbringing, as footage of children acting on aggressive impulses illustrates the factors that shape violent behaviour.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a Trojan horse essay doc that looks like it's going to debate nature vs. nurture and then just... keeps its cool, refuses to pick a side, lets the footage breathe—which is basically punk rock for the PBS crowd, and I'm here for it.
Maher's positioning of child behavior footage against scholarly argument recalls the best of the essay film tradition—Marker, Godard—where montage becomes argumentation, and the refusal to resolve the aggression question becomes the film's actual thesis about knowledge itself.
The coup is so simple it's almost invisible: letting children's raw, unscripted behavior sit in the cut long enough that you stop watching behavior and start watching *intention*, which reframes the entire academic debate without a single explanatory sentence.