How to read a radar
The Comparator draws each filmmaker as an eight-spoke polygon, one spoke per axis, scaled 0–100. Three habits make it legible. First, read shape before size: a large polygon is not a "stronger" filmmaker. It only means high values on many axes, which describes Herzog as accurately as it fails to rank him. Second, look for the lopsided spikes: a profile that collapses on one side and spikes on another (Wiseman: sound minimalism near the ceiling, staging near zero) is telling you where the filmmaker's non-negotiables live. Third, read overlaps, not outlines: where two polygons coincide, the filmmakers could plausibly share a scene; where one spikes and the other collapses, you are looking at the exact dimension where a blend between them would break.
One caution applies to every reading. The spokes are independent by design (a high poetic angle does not subtract from a high human angle), and the axes were released from any forced arithmetic relationship in corpus v2.1.0. The polygon is a heuristic silhouette of documented practice, not a total theory of authorship: hover any point in the Comparator and a one-line justification explains where the score comes from.
Axis 01 · from layer 4 — narrative angle of attack
Human angle
How much of the film's meaning is carried by individual persons (their faces, choices, and daily texture) rather than by systems, arguments, or form.
Structural meaning
A high value means the edit is organized around people: scenes exist because a person is in them, and the film's questions are answered (or refused) at the scale of a life. Access, trust, and time spent with subjects become the primary production resources.
What it does not mean
Not warmth, empathy, or ethical care. Wiseman scores low here and remains scrupulous with his subjects. And not the opposite of "political": Byun Young-joo's high human angle is precisely how her films carry historical weight.
Downstream: high values push narration toward restraint (the person speaks for themselves), editing toward long takes and continuity of presence, and place the heaviest ethical weight on consent and portrayal; the author recedes so the subject can occupy the frame.
A factory announces layoffs. The high-human film follows one worker home and stays through dinner; the low-human film gives the worker a single sentence, then returns to the memo chain that produced the decision.
Axis 02 · from layer 4 — narrative angle of attack
Systemic angle
How much the film treats institutions, structures, and mechanisms (rather than individuals) as its real subject.
Structural meaning
A high value means the film's argument lives at the scale of procedures, incentives, and power: scenes are chosen because they expose how a machine works. The protagonist may be a welfare office, a legal system, or a communal ideology.
What it does not mean
Not "cold" and not "anti-human." Since corpus v2.1.0 this axis no longer trades off against the human angle. For Wang Bing and Patwardhan the systemic is reached through persons; both values can be high at once.
Downstream: high values favor accumulation structures (chapters of evidence, institutional cycles), tolerate narration when a case must be argued, and shift ethics from portrayal of persons to fairness of the indictment; the author becomes an analyst or a prosecutor.
A patient dies in a hospital ward. The high-systemic film shows the admission procedures, the staffing board, and the billing code; the low-systemic film never leaves the family's faces in the corridor.
Axis 03 · from layer 4 — narrative angle of attack
Poetic angle
How much meaning is produced by form itself (rhythm, visual association, duration, texture) rather than by information or argument.
Structural meaning
A high value means the edit is built on formal logic: images rhyme, sequences breathe, and the film trusts association to carry what exposition would flatten. Varda's heart-shaped potatoes argue nothing and mean everything.
What it does not mean
Not "beautiful cinematography." Wang Bing's images are often striking, yet his value is near zero because duration, not composition, does his structural work. And not Nichols's Poetic mode: this axis measures an angle of attack on material, not a mode classification.
Downstream: high values license non-linear editing, motivate scored or designed sound, loosen narration into essay or voice, and move the ethical question from "is this fair to the subject?" toward "is this fabrication honest about itself?"; the author becomes a composer.
A wheat field before harvest. The low-poetic film holds it two seconds as an establishing shot; the high-poetic film stays three minutes on wind patterns until the field becomes the film's argument about time.
Axis 04 · from layer 2 — epistemological stance
Reflexivity
How visibly the film acknowledges (or interrogates) its own act of filmmaking.
Structural meaning
A high value means the apparatus is part of the subject: the filmmaker appears, the artifice is declared, or the film's construction is itself questioned on screen. At the ceiling (Trinh, 98) the critique of representation is the film.
What it does not mean
Not honesty, and its absence is not deception. Wiseman's near-zero reflexivity is a rigorous code, not a concealment. Nor does it require doubt about truth: Morris scores 95 while insisting an objective truth exists and can be established.
Downstream: high values invite first-person narration, permit visible seams in the edit (slates, repeated takes, the crew in frame), and reframe ethics around transparency of method; the author steps forward as a named, fallible presence.
The boom microphone dips into frame. The low-reflexivity film cuts the take; the mid-reflexivity film keeps it and moves on; the high-reflexivity film asks, on camera, why we hide microphones at all.
Axis 05 · from layer 2 — epistemological stance
Ambiguity tolerance
How willing the film is to end without a verdict: to leave questions genuinely open rather than resolved.
Structural meaning
A high value means unresolved contradiction is a destination, not a failure: the film is built so that the viewer inherits the question. A low value means the film exists to close a case: whether Moore's indictment or Burns's synthesis.
What it does not mean
Not confusion, and not the same thing as reflexivity. Morris is the corpus's cautionary pair: reflexivity 95 but ambiguity 25. He stages contradictory accounts as method, yet his films assert who did it. Preserving contradiction en route is not tolerating it as an ending.
Downstream: high values suppress conclusive narration, favor endings that withhold, permit contradictory testimony to stand uncorrected, and shift ethics toward trusting the audience; the author acts as a curator of questions rather than a judge.
Two witnesses disagree about who fired first. The low-ambiguity film lets narration adjudicate before the scene ends; the high-ambiguity film lets both versions stand, and ends the film without deciding.
Axis 06 · from layer 6 — ethical boundary logic
Confrontation tolerance
How far the filmmaker will go in provoking, challenging, or pursuing subjects who have not invited it.
Structural meaning
A high value means confrontation is an accepted production tool: ambush interviews, doorstepping, questions designed to destabilize. A low value means the filmmaker's code forbids applying pressure. Access is earned through patience or trust, never forced.
What it does not mean
Not courage, and not political commitment. Byun Young-joo scores 10 while making films of enormous political consequence. Her refusal to pressure survivors is the method. Nor is high confrontation inherently unethical: Patwardhan's street interrogations target the powerful, not the vulnerable.
Downstream: high values produce scenes with visible power struggle, faster and more rhetorical editing around the confrontation beat, and concentrate the ethical risk on the moment of ambush itself; the author becomes an on-screen antagonist to somebody.
The CEO declines the interview. The low-confrontation film notes the refusal in a title card; the high-confrontation film waits in the lobby, camera rolling, until security arrives, and keeps that footage.
Axis 07 · from layer 6 — ethical boundary logic
Staging acceptance
How much arrangement, reenactment, or fabrication the filmmaker permits in front of the camera.
Structural meaning
A high value means the filmmaker will construct events for the film: Morris's forensic reenactments, Oppenheimer's perpetrator-directed fantasies, Herzog's declared fabrications. A low value is a purity code: the camera records only what would have happened anyway.
What it does not mean
Not dishonesty. In this corpus the heaviest stagers are also the most explicit about it: Herzog declares fabrication as his path to "ecstatic truth," and Morris's reenactments are openly artificial. Hidden staging inside an observational pretense would be a different, and worse, thing than a high score here.
Downstream: high values open the film to designed lighting, art direction, and non-documentary craft; editing can construct time freely; the ethical center moves from "did this happen?" to "does the film declare what it built?"; the author becomes a director in the fiction sense.
The reunion happened before the crew arrived. The low-staging film accepts the loss and works with what remains; the high-staging film asks the family to greet each other again. The difference between filmmakers is whether the audience is told.
Axis 08 · from layer 3 — sound doctrine
Sound minimalism
How much the soundtrack is restricted to what the filmed world itself produces (versus narration, score, and designed sound).
Structural meaning
A high value is a doctrine of restraint: location sound only, no music, no voice-over (the Wiseman code). A low value means the soundtrack is an authored instrument: continuous score, wall-to-wall narration, sound design steering the viewer's feeling beat by beat.
What it does not mean
Not silence, and not poverty of sound. Wang Bing's 90 is a dense world of machines, wind, and voices. And a low value is not a lack of rigor: Burns's continuous score is as codified a doctrine as Wiseman's abstinence.
Downstream: high values remove the narrator's safety net (scenes must be self-explanatory), lengthen shots so ambient sound can establish space, and make any single music cue an enormous statement; the author's voice survives only in selection and cutting.
A factory floor. The high-minimalism film gives you only the machine noise, at length, until the rhythm becomes the meaning; the low-minimalism film lays dramatic strings over the same footage and tells you what to feel about it.