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Salt Fish
Sep 11, 2003

Cybernetic Crumb
Directed by: Bernt Amadeus Capra
Starring: Liv Ullmann, Sam Waterston, Thomas Harriman

Mind Walk is a bold movie that takes theatrical risks to make philosophical points about the world around us. The three main characters tour a French castle while waxing poetic on various topics. The overlying story involves a cynical physicist trying to sell an American presidential candidate her world view.

Like I mentioned, this film is bold and takes decided risks. The dialogue needs to be complex to convey complex points. The story needs to be simple and shut-away from the dialogue to keep things simple enough to follow, and the characters need to be flat and shallow to keep the audience focused on the arguments being given for and against each philosophical principle. It is immediately obvious that the focus of this movie is on that dialogue, and because of this it would be impossible to dock this movie points for the sacrifices it must make to emphasize the philosophy that the audience is presumed to be watching for.

With that said, anyone who is reading this without watching the movie must think that what follows is a glowing review of novel ideas. Sadly, this is not the case.

It is easy to break down the dialogue in the movie into a simple set of smaller arguments to better analyze them. Each point opens with a character having an initiation experience. For example, "look at that tree, that reminds me off..." or "I don’t know why those children playing in that torture chamber bothers me..." or "this clock is simply amazing..." Each launch pad experience leads directly into a monologue by one of our 3 characters, usually our dear Sonia. A second character, usually Jack, will offer a counter argument that is usually just as good as the initial statement. This is where the movie loses my support. After setting up what could be a wonderful debate about philosophy, the first character will use a ridiculous logical fallacy to ease their way around the dissenting character’s argument, and then all 3 characters go "oh! That is absolutely correct" and they move on to their next point without any real discussion. A couple different tactics are used time and time again in this movie. The most frequent is begging the question. When we are examining the clock for example, Sonia’s entire argument against specificity of function is that we are parts of a machine of society. Repairable, replaceable, and this is assumed to be inherently bad, leading us right back to her conclusion. She assumes that something is wrong, and then uses it as evidence that it is bad. Sonia also isn’t above ad hominum, as she shows in her completely random rant against the male gender. She uses a similar tactic to repudiate the average voter, the average citizen, and almost everyone else in society who doesn’t agree with her. Sometimes the movie doesn’t even bother offering a logical fallacy to defeat an argument. When Jack asks "what was wrong with Newton?" the writer’s response is to have Sonia's daughter enter stage left and everyone drops the argument completely.

Mind Walk reminded me heavily of Waking Life, a similar movie full of philosophical monologues concerned with dreaming, reality and our perception. While Mind Walk presents it’s themes in similar terms, its characters are more concerned with the environment, society and culture. Sadly, unlike the characters in Waking Life, who, as people in a dream, are uniquely qualified to speak on their topic, the characters in Mind Walk seem to fall short of their presumed expertise. We have in this movie a physicist who is a social shut-in, a failed presidential candidate and a starving poet, each speaking as though they have the single correct view of the world. This was a marvelous opportunity for wonderful debate that would have been interesting and thought provoking. While the movie arrives at several good conclusions about the environment and mankind, it gets to those points in a disingenuous way that I didn’t care for. Overall while I approve of many conclusions drawn in the movie, and the risks took by the director and writers, I feel that Mind Walk fails to live up to its potential.

1.5/5.5

RATING: 1.5

PROS: Novel attempt at philsophical discussion
CONS: Falls short of its potential.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://imdb.com/title/tt0100151/maindetails

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