Movie Review - The Minimalists: Less is Now (2021)

[Dave Gray]

The Minimalists: Less is Now (2021)

Premise: A documentary looking at the concept of having more, by owning less.

Rating: While I love the subject matter, this is more of a glorified TED Talk covering the basic concept of minimalism, rather than a deep-dive documentary.

This is a follow-up to the 2015 film Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things.  And this is pretty much the same thing.  I'm not really sure that it offers anything new, though I've not seen the original for a while.  This recently became available on Netflix.

Minimalism, as a concept, is something I really relate to and hold dear.  For those like me who are interested in hearing others verbalize the things that you're feeling as a support, or if you're interested in learning about what it is, then you will probably like this.  If you don't or are looking for new, eye-opening insight, you probably won't find it here.

The two hosts came to minimalism through poverty, which they then turned towards thinking success was financial, only to find a hollow end.  I came at it from a very different place.  I think the thing that this documentary does best is that it has lots of people talking about their experiences and I was interested to find so many different paths that can lead you to the same conclusions.  Minimalism is a simple concept: Remove the extra to make room for what you care more about.  Within the minimalism community, much of what we discuss is how to apply that concept.  It can be for physical stuff, hobbies, friendships, time, social pressure, technology, aesthetics/art, money, waste -- whatever.

I'm the type of guy who has an iPhone because it's one device and it's easy to use and combines a lot of different things into one small package.
But someone else might be more of a minimalist with money, where they want a device that's a lot cheaper.
Someone else might be more interested in less technology, so they might want t flip phone that can only make calls.
And someone else might try to live without a cell-phone entirely.  

None of those are wrong.  While the documentary doesn't address this directly, hearing the stories of people's paths towards minimalism from so many walks of life was worthwhile.

The host segments are over-scripted and literally come across as a TED talk.  It's a guy giving a speech about his life in a chair.  Not very inspiring.

[Brian Fein]

GRAVEDIG!!

I just watched this, and I 100% agree with the last line of your review.  By the end of this documentary, it felt like an infomercial trying to sell me on minimalism.  The two hosts aren't likeable and became preachy.  I was hoping to see more examples, and anecdotal evidence of how society is obsessed with material possessions.  However, what I got was a sales pitch about these 2 dudes convincing people to live their personal way of life.