What is interesting and unusual about this film is the way it combines three different modes of presentation - drama, animation and interviews - into a big budget, well-acted, amusingly animated, fully entertaining movie which conveys socially relevant philosophical messages that rely on a mixture of scientific and pseudo-scientific explanations. The underlying philosophical theme, that individual consciousness can alter reality and that humans have individual choices in everything they do, is unabashedly idealist. The underlying social theme, the moral of the story, is that humans can overcome their addictions and base impulses with conscious behavior. An ongoing sense of awe of the universe and optimism about human life also imbue the movie.
While I personally subscribe to socialist and materialist views, and found the philosophical approach and explanations in this movie to be well off the mark, I liked the film. I'd like the see more movies attempt to explain reality and relate such explanations to human life - and do so in as entertaining a way as this one does.
The explanations in this movie generally alternate between reductionism - such as reducing social reality to being an expression of the indeterminatism of quantum physics - and mysticism - such as promoting the analysis of water crystals to determine the "health" of the recent surroundings of a sample of water. The movie website at <http://www.whatthebleep.biz/home/>http://www.whatthebleep.biz/home/ led me to the website of Dr. Masaru Emoto at http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/entop.html where this pseudo-science is peddled. You can get a bottle of your water analyzed for 60,000 to 90,000 yen, and they will send back 20 color photos of your water as ice crystals, scientifically photographed in their lab. Apparently, the more beautiful the crystals are, the healthier the place the water has been. Playing music to water seems to help, in case you were wondering.
Animated scenes with cartoon versions of peptides and neurotransmitters provide some amusing (but mechanical and reductionist) descriptions of how food, alcohol and sex function at the molecular level in human bodies and brains. A chance encounter with a youngster with a basketball who asks "How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?" introduces an explanation of chance and choice in human life in terms of quantum mechanics.
Snips from interviews with over a dozen scientists and a couple mystics (especially J. Z. Knight - through whom the 35,000 year old warrior Ramtha is channelled, well known to those who follow this sort of thing - they even put Ramtha in the credits!) are sprinkled throughout the movie, and function something like a Greek chorus providing running commentary on themes introduced by the dramatic scenes. The technique works surprisingly well. These professors and researchers offer various insights into how they think reality works - generally that consciousness determines being - and what this means for humans - generally that humans can therefore individually determine their destiny.
The movie is tied together dramatically by scenes in the life of a Portland photographer nicely played by Marlee Matlin. Refreshingly, the main character is deaf in the story, but this plays no specific role in the movie except for some scenes where her roommate and a few others sometimes sign while they speak to her. The dramatic scenes revolve around everyday events in the photographer's life � talking to her roommate, interacting with her boss, taking a subway, shooting a wedding, getting a little tipsy on champagne, flirting with someone.
The film explores her darker sides - moments of stress, bad memories of a past relationship, a conversation where she is mean to her roommate, her occasional feelings of self-contempt, her dependency on anti-anxiety pills. In one scene, she breaks a mirror in anger at herself, and then shifts her mood and paints her body with hearts. In the end, she tosses her pills in the trash and looks forward to taking life on without them.
The movie finishes where it began, with the Matlin character taking a psychedelic view - with a look of utter wonder on her face - watching herself walking through a movie lobby - with a voice asking the audience to consider what the bleep do we know.
The movie theatre audience I saw it with was in the 40-60 age range. The movie seemed aimed especially at "New Age" influenced middle class types. At the time it was playing last May, it was in 41 theaters around the country.
The movie offers nothing from a Marxist point of view, but it might offer a creative Marxist some ideas and even some inspiration about making a popular movie with social and philosophical themes of a dialectical materialist bent. The budget for such a project might be a bit of a problem, of course. Perhaps someone with resources might venture down that rabbit hole? But many of us are skeptical such a Marxist movie could ever be possible. Well, here is a good answer to that: what the bleep do we know?
- Steve Gabosch March 27, 2005
At 11:58 AM 3/24/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 1:41 PM To: 'PEN-L list' Subject: What the bleep do we know ? movie on quantum mechanics
http://www.whatthebleep.com/
Now Playing at the Main Art Theatre
<http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Films/films_frameset.asp?id=42823> This unique film combines quantum physics, multi-dimensional visual effects, a dramatic story and interviews with leading scientists and mystics. Amanda (Marlee Matlin) finds herself in a fantastic world when her daily life literally begins to unravel, revealing the uncertain world of the quantum field hidden behind what we consider to be our normal, waking reality. Fourteen top scientists and mystics serve as a modern day Greek Chorus, their ideas woven throughout as a tapestry of truth. The film posits that science and spirituality are not different modes of thought, but are in fact describing the same thing. Official Web Site <http://www.whatthebleep.com/>
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