This is a documentary about Polaroid instant film. Might not be so obvious, but really, it really is. Falling asleep halfway through does not diminish said proclamation. Might require several viewings (as was the case) and multiple strong coffees, but "Instant Dreams" tells (kinda) the story of the revolutionary film process (well, until digital made everything obsolete) that swept the nation, nay the world.

Telling the tale in a bizarre, seemingly unrelated forked path, this flick follows oddball folks as they expound on the virtues of not waiting a week to see their snaps, plus a love for the stupendous superiority of blurry, colour challenged shots. Folks covet their Polaroids. And now when the "back to analogue" scam, er, movement has convinced hipsters to buy vinyl records at $40 a pop, the resurgence of expensive old school photographs is a thing.

Ramping up the quirk factor, is an oddly menacing, purply hued conspiratorial style doc within this doc, about mysterious science genius and Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land. In some rare, creepy, but in a cool X-Files way footage, he basically predicts the iPhone by taking out a dark object, faking/taking a picture with it, and making a claim that it will store all your information. Edwin H. Land passed in 1991. Is this for real? Is this like the moon landing? Who knows? Not me. But clearly a full blown documentary on Edwin H. Land is deserving, if not a ninety hour PBS project by Ken Burns.

Filled with weird, psychedelic interludes (the staying awake challenge),there's a "2001: A Space Odyssey" vibe going on here. As in, there's something way bigger than physical photos at play here. Or maybe not.

I loved "Instant Dreams", all three times, perhaps for the wrong reasons, but there you have it. Snap snap snap.

I get that this is interesting to the people involved but generally, it's hard for anybody on the outside to get interested. It's a question of sentiment, and that's always something hard to relate to. Objectively speaking, the Polaroid has been entirely eclipsed by digital photography. How more instant can you get than digital photography and digital display? How more "in the moment" can you be when you can shoot thousand of images a second, and select the best one? Polaroid is something sentimental, something very few people can relate to. So the value of this documentary is not in its tech aspects, but more as a mirror into human condition, specifically the power of sentimentality.

So, where is the recipe? Or rather, where did it go? How did it get lost? What is the story about that?

This mystery is dangled in front of our noses, but never delivered - for reasons unknown. Maybe it was an unknown in 2016/17, when the docu was assembled, and maybe - I haven't yet googled it - it has never come to light, how the recipe of the original Polaroid chemistry was lost. But it remains, after this movie, the most interesting mystery. Especially following the claim that the Polaroid chemistry for instant developing is and was the most complex fully man made chemistry in the world. I want to know!!

In stead we are given half a story of the loss of the analog instant - the chemistry on the same level as our bodies - which I agree with, it being the reason for me to watch this documentary alt all - infused with delicious colours and examples of people using the remaining part of expired Polaroid films in the world, in 2016/17 (probably not anything left now),which is stragely devoid of actual LOVE of the Polaroid, and more like brainstormed examplifications. Not uinteresting, just not what the movie could have been.

Sadly. And still not a stable recipe (2021) with the same sprectrum of colour and versatility of the old Polaroid recipe. BUT admirable - the people behind the Impossible dream - and loving fortification against the digitalisation of human interaction with the world. Un-editable photos of the moment that you know originates in that moment.