Review: Bad knees, prophecies, and wondrous possibilities in ‘The Man Who Saves the World?’
2025 / Dir. Gabe Polsky
☆ 3.5/5
Watch if you like: Grizzly Man, the mystical secrets of the universe, Grey Gardens, the ancient revelations of Nostradamus, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and needing multiple knee replacements that make it very difficult to finish your decades-in-the-making desert mansion.
Most people lead fairly conventional lives: go to work, come home, watch TV, repeat. If you’re Patrick McCollum, you’ve been a jewelry maker, carnie, kung fu master, prison chaplain to Charles Manson, international peacekeeper for the United Nations, besties with Jane Goodall, and even struck by lightning. As if that wasn’t enough, when director Gabe Polsky catches up with McCollum for the documentary The Man Who Saves the World?, Patrick is trying to fulfill an ancient prophecy to help unify the indigenous tribes of the Americas and save the rainforest.
Polsky acts as the audience surrogate, encountering Patrick with considerable skepticism about his incredible stories—even hiring a private investigator to ensure Patrick isn’t a conman. When it comes to the latest chapter of his life, Patrick is initially skeptical as well after first encountering a group of indigenous elders in India who told him about a prophecy that a man they believe to be him will not save the Amazon, but help to broker a meeting between tribes that will lead them to unify to prevent deforestation and global destruction. A series of escalating coincidences, including a vision from a potentially schizophrenic former millionaire, leads him to try to help.
The Man Who Saves the World? is at its best when it mirrors the oddball nature of McCollum’s life, where one moment he could be going to Starbucks for a beloved mocha frappuccino, and the next showing Polsky the absurd unfinished mansion he’s been building in the New Mexico desert since the 1970s—and that as a man now in his seventies with bad knees and a bad back he likely never will. He leaves in the warts and all, like when Polsky becomes overwhelmed by the desert heat and has to go to the hospital, or the mix of surreal and mundane that makes up Patrick’s life as when he has to move a couch around while Jane Goodall is on a Zoom call with him and an indigenous elder so she can see everyone in frame.
For better and for worse, Polsky is thrown into this wild scenario and tries to make sense of it all along the way, giving the 87-minute documentary a sense of biting off more than it can chew at times. There are questions of what a prophecy is and the differences between indigenous and Western ways of understanding; the growing tensions between Polsky feeling like everyone is full of it and McCollum’s earnestness; the destruction of the Amazon and what that means for the planet; and trying to understand the individual and collective goals of the various tribes McCollum encounters.
Besides the joy of spending time with a fascinating character, The Man Who Saves the World? has stayed with me and helped me to ponder my own life and goals. The state of the world can make me feel powerless and alone, but thinking about Patrick’s wild experiences and not letting a bad knee get in the way of journeying to a remote indigenous tribe to try to make a difference is a reminder of all of life’s wondrous possibilities. If you decide to travel into The Man Who Saves the World?, I imagine your eyes will be a little more open by the end too.