 | After reading the exchanges about this film on a related thread in the General Forum of this site, and having reviewed The Secret here earlier, I decided to make the time to watch and review this film. Fortunately, I located a streaming video of it on Google Video. This means you will not need to pay for a film with a questionable agenda and apparent ties to a New Age cult that aims to separate people from their money.
This film attempts to "prove" the primacy of consciousness by appeals to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). For those unfamiliar with QM, one of its central mysteries centers on the double slit experiment. In this experiment, scientists send streams of subatomic particles through double slits toward a screen. Unusual phenomenon such as the apparent passage of the same particle through both slits simultaneously, and screen results depicting particles as points or particles as waves depending upon the presence of observers, led physicists collaborating in Copenhagen to advance the idea that subatomic particles -- the constituents of reality -- exist only as "probability wave functions" that collapse into specific points only upon being observed. In other words, reality's nature depends upon the consciousness observing it. Parts of the film also appeal to the many worlds interpretation of QM which argues that the odd results of experiments like the double slit arise from the existence of unobservable parallel universes.
Although many scientists -- even one interviewed in the movie named Dr. David Albert -- have condemned this film as New Age nonsense and an abuse of QM concepts, the fact that most quantum physicists accept the Copenhagen interpretation while many others accept the many worlds interpretation should lead Objectivists to think of Ayn Rand's essay "The Chickens' Homecoming" and her famous words: "Brother, you asked for it!" Any yielding to the idea that consciousness can reshape reality must lead inevitably to New Age entertainment of the idea that we can reshape our world through our thoughts. This film explores that idea and the quantum mechanical chickens come home to roost.
The film features the attractive deaf actress Marlee Matlin as the protagonist who plays a divorced photographer named Amanda. Much like The Secret, it showcases a female central character in distress and looking for answers to get her life on track. As the film progresses, it intermixes the story of Amanda with interviews of scientists in a variety of fields ranging from QM to neurology. The first half of the film features a number of QM scientists of varying degrees of credentials and credibility as they speculate about the nature of reality and its link to spirituality. They all march lockstep to the tune of the primacy of consciousness over existence.
The second half of the film steps up a notch to the molecular level of human neurology and the nature of emotions. Had the film focused solely on this fascinating subject and foregone the QM silliness altogether, I could have recommended it without hesitation. It hints at links between reason and emotion and the idea that we can volitionally reprogram our thoughts to alter our emotional responses. Here, Amanda finds herself at a Polish wedding at the church where she herself got married the same day her husband met his future marriage-busting mistress at Amanda's own wedding. Finding herself in emotional distress at these memories, Amanda embarks on a drinking binge that leads to hilarious results. The film accompanies these antics with some impressive anthropomorphized computer animations of chemical interactions within the human endocrine system. This section alone makes the movie worth watching.
Amanda finally reaches a turning point when she looks at herself in the mirror the next morning, hung over, and says that she hates herself. Recalling some supposed words of wisdom heard earlier in the story, she decides consciously to begin to love herself and her existence in this world. Objectivists will have no objection to making such a conscious decision, though they will object to the pseudoscience that led Amanda to make that choice. She decides to do so because water constitutes the bulk of the human body and a Japanese "scientist" did a study showing how thoughts affect the beauty of water crystals.
Perhaps the most frightening and offensive aspect of this film comes from the end credits. Nowhere during the body of the movie do the names or credentials of any of the talking heads caption the visuals. Instead, the viewer must wait until the end credits roll to see that one of the talking heads, a blond woman in her middle years wearing heavy makeup who talks with a thick "Count Chocula" accent, has throughout the film served as a "channel" for a mystical figure named "Ramtha." Even this part requires further research on the part of the viewer to learn that supposedly Ramtha lived millennia ago in the ancient civilization of Atlantis and now speaks through J. Z. Knight -- the woman -- to inform us of our god-like powers of human potential.
Critics on various open review sites such as the Internet Movie Database have observed that this film serves as a lure to draw gullible people into Ramtha's School of Enlightenment -- a costly cult trap. Horror stories of credulous relatives drawn into this school and made the poorer for it have made their way into these comments. Objectivists grasp the primacy of existence well enough to avoid these traps. Thanks to this Google Video, they can also forego financing Ramtha in any way whatsoever while still experiencing the film. |
