''What the
Bleep Do We Know?'' a quirky film by a former Silicon Valley
entrepreneur that links quantum physics with the teachings of
a Washington state guru - who channels a 35,000-year-old
warrior - is breaking attendance records at art houses across
the country.
A word-of-mouth campaign,
undeterred by reviews skeptical of the film's New Age
underpinnings and leaps of scientific faith, has made it an
unexpected hit among independent films. Box office returns of
$8.3 million in mid-November put it among the top-grossing
indies in recent years.
Filmmakers
are already capitalizing on interest by
readying a picture book for the
holidays.
''What the Bleep'' weaves
cartoon illustrations through interviews with Ivy League
scientists and spiritual philosophers to suggests a new
spirituality for the 21st century.
Its
everyday relevance plays out through the soap opera story of
Amanda, a photographer and divorcee (played by Marlee Matlin)
who is unhappy with just about
everything.
But it's the film's premise -
that we, not a separate, judging God, create reality - that's
spinning out the strongest
reverberations.
Even mainstream Christians e-mailed their
compliments, said producer William Arntz. ''We puzzled over
that,'' he said. The 54-year-old former software engineer
funded the film with some of the millions he made selling his
company, AutoSys, during the dot-com
boom.
''To think that one little planet
in the whole Milky Way or one group of people has the whole
franchise to heaven starts looking like the Middle Ages when
the Earth was the center of the universe,'' said Arntz, who
was raised a Lutheran and dabbled in Buddhism while living in
San Francisco and commuting
to San Jose.
''A lot of
people have realized that's an idea that is really
outdated.''
Perhaps the warrior Ramtha
conveys the new concept best: ''There is no such thing as good
or bad; there is no God waiting to punish you. Everyone is
gods.''
Arntz and the film's two other
producers are unabashed members of the Ramtha School of
Enlightenment, founded by JZ Knight, a deep-voiced Elke
Sommers look-alike who appears in the film. A native of
Roswell, N.M., who reportedly experienced psychic phenomena at
an early age, she says she was visited in 1977
by Ramtha, an ancient warrior from
Atlantis who proposed channeling his message through her,
according to the University of Virginia's Religious Movements
Homepage Project.
Arntz admits the
intent of ''What the Bleep'' was to hit hard on what he called
an ''old way of thinking'' - God as a separate being from
humanity that must be cultivated, humored and
obeyed.
The film takes us along with
Amanda as she learns that matter, as shown by quantum physics,
is not static but a continuum of possibilities. She comes to
see that she can choose among them, shifting her brain
chemistry from habitual
pathways - and emotions. |
RETURN TO TOP