What the #$*! do we know?
This film is marketed as being about how quantam physics can change your life. A 'day in the life' story, interwoven with talking heads from various scientific, philosophical and psychological disciplines.
When I saw the ad for this film in the paper, I raised my eyebrows in a cynical sort of way. It looked like an ad for a weirdo-fringe quasi-religious sect conference: 'find out how this film has helped thousands of people to change their outlook on life and spirituality!!' That sort of thing. But, I then had it recommended to me in such strong terms that I went along.
It is certainly a thought and discussion provoking film. But, even after trying to suspend my inital skepticism, I still came out of it feeling like I'd just sat through a 2 hour religious tract. Which was weird, because the film didn't seem to be deliberately structured around a single religious agenda...it just so happened that all these highly educated scientific and philosophical brains said stuff that corroborated the religious pronouncements of the slightly flaky looking woman with God-anger issues who got more and more air time as the film progressed. Who am I to argue with physics?
However, a number of internet sites later, and I feel slightly the wiser about what was really going on. One interesting review can be found at http://media.orkut.com/articles/0137.html
Even knowing this stuff, there's still questions raised in the film that are fun and worthwhile to ask and explore and discuss. But it's worth being aware, I reckon, of the hidden agenda. And that's the most frustrating thing about the film - its inauthenticity. The film pretends to be something it's not, and doesn't come clean about its angle. However, if you've got a few spare dollars and many grains of salt to take it with, it's still interesting viewing.
"Neither good science nor good art" - Parabola
I subscribe to a fine quarterly called Parabola (www.parabola.com), which is approximately to the Ramtha people as Cityside is to Destiny Church. I was impressed, given that they're selling the DVD, that they printed a review of it which described it as "neither good science nor good art", saying that while it was commendable to look at these issues, the way it was done was very superficial. It presented scientific speculation as proven fact and had a rather lame fictionalised story about someone overcoming their negative attitudes. They didn't mention the Ramtha hookup - possibly the reviewer was unaware. It's good to know, though, that a film on topics like this can become popular - maybe we should make a better one.