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Directed by: William Arntz Starring: N/A While having a casual conversation with one of my old teachers, who is now a close friend of mine, we came upon the topic of spirituality and religion. The existance of humans and matter is often a topic that is "explained" by religion, but not by science. This topic puzzles both of us, but having recently seen the movie What the $#*! do we know?, my teacher offered a bit of insight, and told me to watch it myself. So I followed his advice, and sought out the only theater in town that was hosting this low budget film. During the showing of it, there were maybe 10 people watching the movie, which I thought was ridiculous because the film was one of the best movies that I've ever seen. The movie begins by jumping into questions like "Who are we?" and "Why are we here?" to get you thinking about the world. THen it proceeds to introduce Quantum Mechanics to bring into perspective a new way of looking at the world. Many of the doctors suggest theories such as that the only matter that exists exists only because we believe that it does, and there may in fact much more matter out there that we do not come into contact with or do not notice because we do not believe in it. It also suggests that we cannot separate from reality and imagination, because we percieve reality WITH our imagination, which goes to suggest that if we truly believed so, we would be able to walk on water or fly. Then the movie delves into the neurons in the brain and the chemical balances that create the emotions and personalities that we have. This part is very interesting because its saying that with conscious effort, one can "rewire" their brain to behave a certain way. The whole movie leaves you asking a million questions such as "So if I raised a child to believe he can walk on water, he will be able to do so?" But leaves you no sound answer, for maybe the child WILL be able to, but is in fact in a different existance, in his own imagination. In addition to being informative, the movie is very well constructed and I say it is a MUST SEE to anyone that has access to it. On a side note, upon leaving the theater, I began a conversation with my friend Emily, who is a Practicing buddhist in her mid 50's. She was saying that she has a friend who once hosted a very high ranking Tibetan Buddhist Lama with ~4,000 followers. He lived with her friend for a period of time and began to explain to her that he chose this incarnation to help others along the path of enlightenment, and that he himself is a manifested form of a Buddha. Now of course, many people can testify to being super-human, but this is the hosed UP PART. This man sleeps less than 2 hours a night, and spends the rest of his time redirecting his energy in to other things. Now paralleling the Quantum Physics part of this, the Lama knows that he can control his surroundings by redirecting his existance. One evening while he was meditating on the porch, he called Emily's friend outside to show her something. He was sitting there with a stone about the size of a potatoe in his hand, and while she was watching him, he proceeded to stick his thumb into the stone and leave an imprint of it there. He handed her the stone and it was rock solid. He then explained how you can control reality by redirecting the mind. While telling Emily this story, her friend was in tears because the Lama had basically destroyed any concept of reality she had ever had, and she didnt know what to think about the world. I swear to you this story is totally true, and only adds to the mystery of the film. RATING: 5.5 PROS: Mind Boggling, Gives a great new look on the existance of the universe. CONS: May be hard to follow without an open and appreciative mind. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.whatthebleep.com/
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Jun 26, 2004 08:55
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 13:10 |
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Some of the most intriguing points it brings up is that at the sub-atomic level, everyone and everything is connected, because we're all part of the same substances, so in effect we create our own collective reality. If a person can convince themselves with every fiber of their being that reality is not all they see around them, they can theoretically do incredible things that most would deem 'impossible'. The movie is probably 80% documentary, 20% 'plot', as it semi-follows a story of a professional photographer (played by deaf actress Marlee Matlin), but the story really isn't that important, it's more of a 'stage' to show examples of what the scientists interviewed in the documentary segments are talking about. The story part gets really weird at some points, and I thought it got in the way. It could've been toned down a lot and not even had a specific plot, and I kept wishing it would get back to the science of it all. I thought some of the sequences (the wedding scene in particular) could've been cut to make more room for more scientific explanations. Unfortunately it gets in the way of itself far too often and ends up being kind of ridiculous by the end. But for a moment there, they made me think a little bit. Rating: 2.0 Bonk fucked around with this message at 20:47 on May 28, 2008 |
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Mar 16, 2005 10:01
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This movie was made by a cult, http://www.ramtha.com/ It is also quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. It is full of idiotic nonsense. Some of the quotes from the people being interviewed are actually reasonable, but are put into a totally ridiculous context. Some of the scientists are actually suing the makers of the movie, for being misrepresented, For some more about them, see http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000083.html The main message of the movie is actually: "You can change your life just by thinking about it." That includes your need for medication. The "story" sequences were also terrible on just about every level possible. 1/5
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Mar 26, 2005 08:17
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This movie did nothing for me. None of the information was new, and it was retold in a trite fashion. This is the type of movie I see frat guys watch while high and being duly impressed. I appreciate the idea of trying to convey this type of philosophy through a more popular medium than books, but it just fails. The stuff that goes into quantum physics is explained half-assed, it does not even touch on the multiverse theory, which by all means should have been mentioned (if you want to talk about mind boggling poo poo that challeneges one's concept of reality). I went in expecting something exploritory, but it was very obviously working a thesis. The plot was definately filler. Th acting was terrible, the animation parts were something I expected from the Discovery Channel for Kids My friend and I looked at eachother at the end of this film both unimpressed and let down. She is a Buddhist and I am a Christian Humanist and neither one of us was convinced that we had learned anything new. Just about all this information has been available to inquiring minds for the last 10 years, some of which has been disproven even more recently. I read articles online to see if their view of quantum theory were even respected by the scientific community. I was not suprised to discover thery were not. I'll give it 1.5/5
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Mar 27, 2005 19:09
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My general impression of this film is that most of it has already been done before, specifically, in Waking Life, which has a far better presentation. It follows the same general format of giving people an opportunity to speak on a given subject, and the main 'character' goes on a journey of enlightenment. The major difference is the presence of an attempt at a cohesive plot, which works well enough, when what is learned in the film is put into practice. Overall, some of what was said sounded like non-sense, especially from that one woman who's qualifications were being from the "School of Enlightenment," and I wasn't left feeling particularly satisfied, though some points were more salient for inspiration. My rating is 3/5
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Mar 28, 2005 17:52
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Any Buddhist who basically has studied... I don't know, ANY of the traditional texts in most every tradition I know of would chastize - nay - beat the EVERLIVING poo poo out of you (quite literally) for even for a moment supposing that - from the subject position, one could "maricle up" some change in "things in the world" - or that you as a self could ever "obtain" any sort of enlightenment. This sort of new age idiocy is about as disrespectful to Buddhism as fundamentalist christians are to the history of the thoughtful Christian tradition. "Yes, if you say you believe in Jesus you go to heaven where there is lots of candy." - that is, "When you are enlightened you can levitate and are reincarnated into cats and lions and can bend spoons." This movie was full of more godforsaken illogical stoner poo poo than I have ever seen, speaking as a graduate student in philosophy with a keen interest in physics, in my life. Quantum theory, which really does have alot to offer I feel, is pretty raped in this film, and if the people interviewed are going to sue, I wish them the best of luck. If only a few Zen Buddhist masters could be revived to take up some whacking sticks as well.... 0
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Apr 6, 2005 05:33
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 13:10 |
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I love this Salon article on the subject. http://salon.com/ent/feature/2004/09/16/bleep/index.html A lot of wonderful information on JZ Knight (The crazy cult lady from the movie). Apparently in her divorce papers hearing she told the judge that her husband could cure his AIDS by doing breathing exercises her cult advocated. Along with some other anti-homosexual rants. Wonderful people behind the movie. </loathing> Oh and as for the movie its horrible. Even worse when you find out who made it and that all of it is crazy psuedo science and the only actual scientist has written out against the movie saying he was misrepresented. Huge 0. (Unless your going in to watch the crazies and bad acting then its entertaining.)
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Apr 25, 2005 07:55
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