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July 7th, 2008
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Make your own reality

Spiritual hokum disguised as hard science
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April 30th, 2008 issue

By Rachel Shimp

COURTESY PHOTO
#$*!, my head hurts: Amanda (Marlee Matlin)'s many neuroses are explained.
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What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?


Directed by Mark Vicente, Betsy Chasse and William Arntz
With Marlee Matlin, Elaine Hendrix and John Ross Bowie

For the Post
“If you get the message, hang up the phone,” wrote the British philosopher Alan Watts in 1965’s The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness. Experimental psychedelic drug users have passed Watts’ quote down ever since, as a warning against falling too deep into the rabbit hole.
Which makes it apt for the celluloid curiosity What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?, whose aim is to send you tumbling down the hole headfirst. The 2004 film, which is part quantum physics primer and part spiritual treatise, is making its way around the Czech Republic this spring. Its creators have a message, and a worldwide party line.  
The movie’s basic idea is that consciousness can alter the physical world — “create your own reality” — using the principles of the relatively new science of quantum mechanics. The filmmakers co-opt the ideas that the universe is made of thoughts rather than substance, that “empty space” isn’t empty, and that what you believe composes your self and your surroundings. In short, the power of positive thinking.
Documentary discussion and computer animation explain the concepts, which are illustrated in a thin narrative that follows a knowledge-seeking photographer, Amanda (played by Marlee Matlin), as she goes about her day. She’s having problems with her job and her love life, and is ripe for a breakthrough.
From an artistic standpoint, the film is a confusing hodgepodge of styles. Animations that describe how nerve nets and endorphin receptors work are intriguing, while others are ridiculously amateurish. As Amanda shoots a Polish wedding, people are shown through the actions of their cells — multicolored blobs with eyes that get hungry, horny or dance a little jig. Making such broad generalizations about people is in line with the movie’s attitude that we’re all pretty clueless.
From an intellectual standpoint, What is also sloppy, with real academics juxtaposed with mystics. Their disembodied heads fly past on what resembles a sparkly, blue-green network of nerves. Their sound bites come in rapid succession. But the editing, which gives the sense that every quote is being taken out of context, is outdone by the most glaring offense of all — none of the speakers are credited until the credits roll. Unfortunately for the real physicists and scholars involved, this renders them indistinguishable from the kooks until the very end.
In particular, one of the two females interviewed is a calm, wisdom-dispensing presence. It turns out she’s Ramtha, as channeled by the psychic JZ Knight. Who’s Ramtha? Oh, just a 35,000-year-old warrior from the lost city of Atlantis.
The academic community has criticized the way What speeds from legitimately exciting ideas about the nature of thought and matter to conjecture. For example, Amanda is shown the work of Masaru Emoto, who claims that water molecules change shape based on the good or bad thoughts beamed at them. Since human beings are 90 percent water, ponder that, a stranger tells her. She does, and ends up tossing her anti-anxiety medication into a rubbish bin.
Drugs factor into the film as a symbol of emotional addiction. “If you can’t control your emotional state, you must be addicted to it,” someone says. It’s propaganda disguised as scientific, then philosophical discourse. Just as Scientology’s dianetics practice promises to “get rid” of stress and unhappiness, What promises that the key to well-being is in the understanding of your mind.
For a movie made for “smart people” who can choose their own reality, it certainly treats them as the opposite. When you’re led by the final frame (or the promotional team waiting outside the theater) to the film’s Web site, you’ll find a variety of spiritual aids, and material crap, at your fingertips. It seems “the ever-expanding world of wild possibilities and unlimited thought” can be entered for just $14.99.
Rachel Shimp can be reached at rshimp@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (30/04/2008):

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