What the #$*! Do We Know!?
by
Gil Mansergh
Iım going to recommend that you see a movie youıve probably never heard about but Iım willing to bet that after youıve seen it, youıll be telling friends to see it too.
Iım asking you to trust me on this and disregard the several strikes the movie has set against itself. First, is the absurd title (which probably seemed catchy to film makers William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente). Itıs a bear to write and remember. Iıve taken to calling it ³What the heck do we know?² and others are calling it ³What the bleep.² Second, it advertises itself as a movie focusing on a subject most Americans would cross the street to avoidthe existential impact of quantum physics. Third, itıs a movie which asks you to think about real intellectual issues. Forget about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, this film questions whether what we know as ³reality² may, in fact, be biochemical thunderstorms raging across our brains. Finally, and perhaps most difficult, this film is almost impossible to categorize. It combines talking head experts, with a divorced-womanıs soap opera, adds in cute, animated, flubber-like characters, a little slapstick humor, some sex scenes, astounding visuals, a few off-the-wall profundities (such as a Japanese photographerıs images of how bottles of purified water react differently to words like love, anger, joy and hate), and ultimately leaves you full of hope and wonder.
If youıre like me and my family, youıll want to see it again.
It deceptively begins like itıs a telephone company commercial or a Nova TV special with a number of peopleıs faces framed by glowing circles and floating across a galaxy-like background. Then these multicultural faces become whole people, talking to us about mathematics or physics or medicine or art or religion. They all seem knowledgeable in their fields of study. They are posed in front of comforting backgroundsa fireplace, a picture window with a forest view, the spouting fountain at San Franciscoıs Palace of Fine Arts, but they are not identified. Some of them look familiar, but their names and letters of accomplishment donıt appear as reassurances on the bottom of the screen. You wonder why, and then you forget, and listen instead to what the people are saying. And what they are saying is how delighted and joyful they are to be talking to us about such marvelous things.
Some of what they share with us is complicated, sometimes they use unsettling words like ³God² and ³religion² and ³science² and ³biochemical matrix² and, luckily for us, the film makers know this. To help us understand things a bit, a Seattle woman named Amanda (Marlee Matlin) becomes our surrogate. An accomplished photographer, she is sharing her studio/living space with a house guest named Jennifer (Elaine Hendrix), who lays huge canvas sheets on the floor, dips her feet in paint, and then dances her paintings. ³I know Iım a bit messy,² Jennifer tells Amanda and apologizes with a gifta photo book of her favorites from Amandaıs files and lots of empty pages ³to fill in with some new work.² But adding artistic photos will have to wait. Amandaıs boss (Barry Newman) has scheduled her to shoot a wedding. ³But thatıs the church where I was married,² the angrily divorced Amanda complains. ³I know. Thatıs why I thought youıd know how best to shoot it,² her boss explains.
Weıre taught a few things as the events at the wedding proceed. For example, a cartoon graphic illustrates what the woman in the tie-dyed silk blouse has shared with us, that specific peptide molecules are keyed to specific receptor cells, and that endorphins released at the cellular level are what define our emotional experiences. And so, when Amanda focuses her camera on the fat man grazing at the wedding buffet she can also see the satisfied fat cells that float around him. Similarly, when she films the two young men sizing up the female guests as potential bed mates, their libidinous cells clamor for attention.
So what the heck does all this mean? I imagine that the film will mean different things to different people. Personally, I found this interconnection of physical, biological, emotional and spiritual experiences to be excitingly mind-bending. But, what I respect most in this film, is how positive and uplifting its message is and how hopeful it made me feel.
Opening in selected communities, itıs currently showing in Sebastopol and begins Friday in Healdsburg, Fairfax and San Rafael. Take some time to see it and then let me know what you think: (707) 823-8128 or gilmansergh@comcast.net
Hear Gil on his ³Cinema Toast² radio show Thursday mornings at 7:35 on KRSH FM 95.9