'Quantum Spirituality': Watching 'What the Bleep Do We Know' with the wellness crowd


A "Scene & Herd" report for The Oregonian's A&E on April 2, 2004. Please note my far more skeptical review of a re-edit of this film in Feb. 2006.




It’s Saturday night at the Bagdad, and there's a line around the block for a movie about.… What the hell is this movie about again?

"My teacher said it was homework," says one young woman in line. For which class? "Yoga."

A clue! This prompts a survey of the line, which snakes around the corner for "What the BLEEP Do We Know?" -- which is, it turns out, a slick semi-documentary about the spiritual implications of quantum physics. Suddenly one notices that this is a real wellness-oriented crowd, no matter the many pitchers of beer they consume over the next two hours. Half the folks in line look like they study some sort of body-work, radiating that special brand of holistic self-satisfaction; the crowd skews young and cable-sweatered. The women wear baby tees sporting complicated Hindu-lite emblems that look like they fell off Sobé bottles. The men wear scarves.

Shot in Portland, "What the BLEEP" -- directed by Mark Vicente, Betsy Chasse and William Arntz and starring Marlee Matlin -- debuted at the Bagdad a few weeks ago. Other than a few newspaper ads and fleeting press, it seems to be building its audience on word of mouth. Screenings have been added at the Mission and the McMinnville Moonlight Theater -- and, if the packed house at the Bagdad is any indication, we may have a sensation on our hands.

"I hear people are lining up to see this on weeknights," adds the yoga student.

"What the BLEEP" is a sort of holistic hand grenade. Its goal? Nothing less than the grand unification of science and spirituality -- only entertaining! Structurally, it's eerily similar to those McGraw-Hill films they used to show in elementary school: The film peppers you with insights from talking heads in the worlds of science and spirituality (none of whom are credited until the end, which may be the only way you could listen to someone who refers to herself as "Ramtha" without giggling). Sound bites about quantum physics, biology, reality and the nature of God are illustrated with F/X-laden fictional interludes starring Matlin as an anxious photographer forced to change her perceptions (irony!). All this and the movie starts with footage of Matlin encountering multiple versions of herself in the Bagdad lobby -- which created quite the tittering frisson in the Bagdad audience.

For the most part, it's provocative fun, but nothing you haven't heard on a Deepak Chopra tape -- the movie's filled with assertions about how "seeing" happens in two directions and how we're only looking at "the tip of an immense quantum-mechanical iceberg" and stoner conundrums like "Have you ever thought about what thoughts are made of?" and &tc. -- but something extraordinary happened afterward. The credits rolled and people stayed in their seats -- and immediately started discussing what they'd just seen.

"I can believe in things existing in two places at the same time," says one young woman exiting the theater. Outside, Jonna and Wilson Lynn declare the film ridiculous -- "It almost seemed like a satire," says Wilson -- while Samuel and Janet Stevenson (reflecting the vast majority that evening) defend it as a joyful celebration of life's deeper mysteries. "I found the connections to science interesting," says Janet. All agree that the fevered arguments suddenly raging around them about the very fabric of perception were very refreshing indeed.

Meanwhile, two guys in creepy android costumes wait outside the door, handing out flyers for an art show -- a Dada antidote to all the Very Important Thoughts rattling through moviegoer heads.

Quantum Spirituality (The Oregonian, April 2, 2004)

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Posted: Fri - April 2, 2004 at 12:00 AM        

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