Directors: William Arntz, Betsy
Chasse and Mark Vicente
Screenplay: William Arntz, Matthew
Hoffman, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente
Cast: Marlee Matlin as Amanda; Elaine
Hendrix as Jennifer; Barry Newman as Frank; Robert Bailey Jr. as Reggie; John
Ross Bowie as Elliot; Armin Shimerman as Man; Robert Blanche as Bob; Larry
Brandenburg as Bruno
An Abstract Candidate
I'll stick my ass in the cocktail sauce if I please...
Today we have a contentious
production to review, and I will immediately present the fact that I had to
completely jettison my original review because, in truth, the source of the
film is a deeply problematic one. Enough was discovered to have a complete scorched
earth policy involved for the original notes and start from scratch, using the
fragments from the first text which was relevant still here in a newer light. I
will still keep the controversial opinion I had originally started this film
with - that I take neither side of the argument between New Age beliefs and
their sceptics. The issue of pseudoscience is one that has become more contentious
over the years, said as someone who openly admits to having a spiritual inkling
and even owns tarot cards, but also believes in common sense. This is a common
sense that we should use what is graspable in tools for things like medicine
and building bridges, not magic. As someone interested in mysticism and
concepts like alchemy, the actual version of it as a spiritual belief, even
magic itself as a concept for me is not a form you can just use to complete a
task like heal a person, let alone ask the question of whether it actually
exists. The issue with this documentary, having to take a sharp left turn in
the review from its original form, is not its beliefs of the mind being
literally able to bend reality as is on the surface of the film and its main
message. That on the surface is confused and what I turned off quickly in this
curious form of New Age documentary-fiction hybrid as I watched it. That, and debating it is the lesser
concerning elephant in the room here.
About single and group
consciousness being able to influence the world, and the divisive referencing
to quantum physics in context to this, the film includes interviews and tried
at being serious as a key to enlighten. Dismissing this for me for a whole
review would be shooting fish in a barrel and a waste of paper, merely opinion,
and I still will include how sadly our black-and-white way of dealing with
subjects like this has its problems. The "kill-it-with-fire" subtle
way does not help discuss these opinions, scrutinise them, and can actually
push more people to pseudoscientific beliefs. It is also naive, as from the
printed press onwards, each technology over centuries and form of communication
allows many voices to be heard, including those of cults who existed long into
human society's existence, who will still exist regardless if one dies from its
press. Far more concerning is that the source of this film is deeply suspicious
and problematic regardless of these surface beliefs.
The film's directors and creators
are part of the Ramtha's School of
Enlightenment. The school has been called a religious cult and is tied to
one of the figures who are interviewed within the film, a woman named J. Z. Knight who founded the school in
1988. Reading up on the school and background on this film has, frankly, caused
me to jettison what I had originally penned because I did not want to now have
a softer view of the production I originally had. That opening statement, of
taking neither side of the argument, is entirely to do with New Age and
pseudoscience against their sceptics, not with a film with a questiomable
background, which does need to be considered with a bitter taste in the mouth
now writing this. Knight's school has
been accused of cult-like tendencies, as her own opinions have spun off into
both anti-gay and anti-Jewish sentiments, among other controversial views1,
alongside the paradox of someone who is a religious leader. She is a woman who claimed
to channel a 35,000-year-old Lemurian warrior spirit named Ramtha, yet sued a
woman in Berlin named Judith Ravell
who claimed to also be channelling Ramtha, taking her to court alongside Whitewind
Weaver, another woman who imparted Ramtha's teachings in her own event and Knight won $10,000 in 2008 from in a law
suit1.
Though this review was going to
be that of finding the accidental cult film with its curious creative choices,
I have to drastically change my opinion on a drop of dime, all quickly because
"cult" literally has to be raised as deeply unsavoury things ringing
my alarm bells. This will be a very negative view of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment which for a follower will be a
bias, me their enemy if they ever bother finding this, but only because these
wary alarm bells ring with a severity. The New Age film I read of, in a
dismissive tiny box of a review in Total
Film magazine, as this managed to get a British theatrical release in the
day, became a lot of morally contentious just in the proofreading stage of the
original review. Having your students do things as drink lye as they have been
accused of, a strongly alkaline solution, especially of potassium hydroxide, a
substance used for washing or cleansing, in a concoction with Dead Sea water is
enough to raise concerns2. My own spiritual beliefs are also that
any organisation requiring large sums of money from their students for teaching
should always be of suspect even if I have a bias inherently in this opinion.
The problems now raised with this
film's existence however cannot undercut the idea that came in the original
review, and has become more loaded. Sadly, for this amateur philosopher, the
inherent irrational nature of human society, that treats individual human life
as disposal in illogical social structures, causes people to feel crushed and
desperate. Modern secular society cannot help either as even the mottos of this
time, to live life to the fullest, and to accept humanity's smallness to the
power of nature and the cosmos, cannot get past the illogical nature of
society, which undercuts this, or that these messages are now even being
shilled to us in advertising to sell Diet Coke or insurance. What the Bleep Do We Know, if you came
to this without the sinister back-story to its creation, feels like if David O Russell's I Heart Huckabees (2004) managed to be weirder, and was stuck
trying to be serious as an inspiration document too, one should be viewed as
vague even for the New Age inclined of viewer, a production made in a climate
where people are desperate for a solution for their lives.
I still want to morbidly prod the
film regardless of the unsavoury content, and a factor to consider was that, better
known and more controversial, another film released as well in 2004 was Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which revealed a huge religious audience
in cinema. Gibson's was a rare case,
an ultra high budget film he managed to be made with his clout, but digital
technology and the likes of the internet have been able to spread the word of
mouth for alternative voices, even with problematic opinions. They have been
able to be more readily available in cinema, now moving onto the internet and
social media over the decades onwards. A film like What the Beep... is also influenced by what was clearly the air of
the time, the post-Millennium fear of the new century, the September 11th 2001
terrorist attack in New York City, and the timeless issue of purpose in a world
which treats a normal person, if they have not privilege or wealth, as a
bystander and a cog only and nothing more.
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The film itself presents itself
with an easy to grasp concern, one which touches into real universal concerns
that, insidiously or not, can grab a person because they are uncomfortable real
especially in their banality. Marlee
Matlin plays Amanda, a female photographer going through an existential
crisis. Not only is she on anxiety medication, but she has the scars from a
marriage ending, the husband cheating on her, and least some religious hang-ups,
which get to some of the more fascinating but also now problematic aspects of
the interviews. These are all part of the accidental and loaded aspects of the
film trying to offer a solution to the problem of modern human society. Also of
note is that, of all things, the film which may have been made by a deeply
problematic religious sect still manages to have far more progressive casting
than a film from sensible minded people decades on, as Amanda is played by Marlee Matlin. The first deaf actress to
win an Academy Award for Children of a Lesser God (1986), and is
a prolific television actress with theatrical roles in-between to this day, her
disability is never referred, merely a figure who lip reads and uses sign
language, and is treated as everyone else, again making the possible cult cult
film inexplicably more progressive than films without its contentious back
story years onwards. This film, as my time with the notorious Atlas Shrugged adaptations between 2011
to 2014 revealed, does raise the uncomfortable issue of how actors end up in
these films, whether for work or personal interest, with deeply problematic
concerns to raise, here as well even behind the camera. Truly we the viewers
have ourselves been naive to acting being a job you do as a career, even on
contentious productions, when Amanda slightly lecherous photography boss is Barry Newman, the lead from the cult car
film Vanishing Point (1971), or that
the strange man who keeps unsubtly telling Amanda "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?", appearing out of nowhere, is Armin Shimerman, who sci-fi fans may
recognise as Quark from Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine (1993-9).
The references to I Heart Huckabees is appropriate, a strange
film from David O. Russell, funded by
20th Century Fox of all people before
Mickey Mouse got them. It was an existential comedy about finding purpose,
which could only have been made in this period whilst still being relevant in
themes today. What the Beep... feels
a cousin to it, only one with the albatrosses of deeply problematic figures
involved, in the accusations levelled against them, and that its desire to be
upfront as an enlightenment tool is only interesting for the things its text
accidentally reveal. The film's newly found sinister edges are sided with how
strange the film also is, trying for a wholesome and playful journey, but by
way of a curious Alice in New Age land scenario, a drama-comedy where Amanda slowly
finds herself in a series of moments suddenly finding the cogs of the world
malfunction. Already having seen multiple realities at once, the first is the
basketball court which exists outside of time and space, Amanda encounters a
young boy who, host of this time bending court, informs her of the malleability
of dimension itself with the help of basketball. The contentious material,
depending on the viewer, can be found in the film's fictional content itself,
such as a later discovery, down in the subway, of exhibits where a Japanese
scientist recorded water particles changing form depending on the blessing or
dismissal they have been given. Again, I the author have no interest in
discussing this, and I do not find this a copout either to say. Far more a
concern now is considering how the film touches on real, uncomfortable concerns
of what modern life can do to people, and how it bends itself to suit for an
outside audience, one of the most prominent interviewees is with its
contentious figurehead J. Z. Knight,
the very stern and frankly exaggerated female figure who proclaims her opinions
with an unbreakable opinion for this viewer's bias opinion, the figure who this
stems from and we are clearly in a snippet of her mind for.
It wants to be playful, What the Beep Do We Know the curious
existential ride for this character Amanda which is bright, as quirky as her
artist roommate, a woman who paints by dancing on a sheet, though its opinions
can all be boiled down to positive thinking literally changing reality, the
depths now with more curious and alarming implications now. The film in how it
is made is conventional, a lower budgeted indie film, but what it says is the
greater concern. The religious discussion in the interviews were fascinating
from the film's perspective, talking of how the idea of a personal God who
demands from human beings becomes a burden, or that this deals with how we
comfort ourselves in vices, something which when I get to the wedding sequence
is going to be an odyssey in itself. But I dig, and I learn of how this has far
more complexity, let alone with one of the prominent interviewees being Micheál Ledwith. A former monsignor in
the Catholic Church, adviser to the pope, and president at St. Patrick’s
College, Maynooth, Ledwith resigned
abruptly in 1994 after paedophilia allegations, settled out of court, and was
defrocked by the Vatican in 2005, which in itself I do not take a side on, but
in itself would be a concern for some readers and should be raised. J. Z. Knight, who has the most virulent
views on the concept of God, present a really complex web that is her mind,
dismissing the idea even of a God in our likeness though coming with the
danger, as the leader of a religious group where she channels its guide, that
she herself could become a cult of personality for those who left her church
and/or have challenged her from an anti- Ramtha perspective. The irony is also
not lost that co-director/co-writer Betsy
Chasse also produced the evangelical teen comedy Extreme Days (2000), where Christianity meets extreme sports, which
just adds more questions.
A film like this exists entirely
because of the ennui and anxieties of the time, and they still exist even in
the modern day, people trying to find a purpose in a bleak world where that
seems hollow. As someone myself who feels most of the existential crisis is blameable
on human society being built on irrational structures, I am not surprised that
people come to work like this, a film where the interviewees, with their
affirmative words, feel authoritarian with the positivity on show. Stranger as
well as is, without the licensed music this film suddenly acquired for one
sequences, the score is from Christopher
Franke of Tangerine Dream, which
is surreal in itself. His career post his work with Tangerine Dream for soundtracks is eclectic enough - even with one
Japanese animated film, Tenchi the
Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love (1996), to his name3 - but his
curious career lead to this. Providing a good score for the film, he yet is too
good at his work, emphasising a pleasantness that draws a viewer to What the Beep..., the affirming nature
to even its soundscape that helped this do so well at the North American box
office in the day as much as other aspects of the movie. One learns of how to
be wary of how visuals and audio cues in cinema can manipulated in examples
like this, a soundtrack influence how a film can be digested, and is something
to always be wary of, even if I have no malice against Franke. Perversely, I want this score separate as an original
soundtrack release, a testament to its sound qualities.
The issues it touches on,
including aging and the vices of the modern world, are common ones, and there
is the sense of the film trying to deal with the banality of life, yet paradoxically.
It has its key figure Knight proclaim
that a personal God is absurd, and the film enforces human beings as small cogs
of the world, but also suggests our malleability of existence is yet possible
to the point we could control it all. Yes, it is confusing, and to be honest,
if this had not still contained topics still dicey for the current day, this
film's tone would end up as a cult film Something
Weird Video would have in their catalogue
as a WTF oddity. Throughout, aware that this material would enrage of a follow
of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, sharpening their knives, as an outsider
with my own opinions, my own biases and perspective, this does feel peculiar
with more issues that hesitate me now the accusations, even if unproven, are
still there nonetheless. Were it not from the problematic nature of how the
film was made, once the then-modern CGI effects start talking of ourselves on a
molecular level, or how the brain works as its own addict, this becomes more a
trip than a learning experience. Some of the interviewees are having their
words distorted entirely and the film crosses a moral line as a result - David Albert, philosopher of physics and
professor at Columbia University, spoke with outrage afterwards that his words
were taken out of context entirely through the editing of his interview4
- but even this transgression is softened because the film is also unfocused
and tonally off for this viewer, a potential audience decades on for the film's
ideas. It is entirely unaware it could have been a better existential comedy
than po-faced, and the wedding sequence is where this film, for all its
alarming nature, just comes off as a bizarre cultural object I feel falls off
the rails in a morbidly compelling way1.
Suddenly the film predates Inside Out (2015), the Pixar animated film depicting human
emotions in anthropomorphic form, and to make the one controversial comment I
will get people coming for me at my house for, even this film, possibly made by
a religious cult, is less pretentious and bluntly honestly than even a film you
have to bear in mind was made for children too. This still managers to be more
bluntly honest of our ids being represented through the ugly and vulgar bacchanal
at a wedding when, inside everyone's mind, an orgy of repressed ids made of
multicoloured blob emotions take advantage of the alcohol and high strung
emotions. The soundtrack suddenly has licensed music - Boston's More Than Feelin',
The Trammps' Disco Inferno, Kernkraft
2000's Zombie Nation and Animotion's Obsession; there are visual
jokes of the bridesmaids in giant pear costumes; Robert Palmer's Addicted to
Love is not only on the soundtrack but turns into a visual parody of the
original music video, of Palmer being
backed by female musicians in the background; and full blown lower budgeted
animation for emotions like gluttony, which are neither pretty or emotionally
sympathetic, is crammed into the viewer's eyes. By the time your emotions are
symbolised by IV drips of coloured emotional liquids, included as dance props
in a musical number set to dance remixed Polish polka music, we have stretched What the Beep Do We Know into a cult
item in dire of need of reassessment as much as an actual cult item from a
deeply problematic religious group if any of the accusations are true.
The film's legacy, including a re-cut
version in 2006 called What the Bleep!
Down the Rabbit Hole, does raise the fact that these works of contentious
nature do not die if you mock them as pseudoscience, that they are parts of the
complexity of human nature where we will still be drawn to even deeply
problematic moral views. Voices of all opinions exist, and in cinema as digital
filmmaker and more independent creators with their own beliefs have become more
common, North American cinema alone has seen the likes of Kirk Cameron's Saving
Christmas (2014) to the films of right wing figure Dinesh D'Souza grow and appear. These alternative voices have
gained footholds in North American cinema independently, and cinema is just
another medium for these voices as when books were a new thing, something we
have always had as a species. Voices, alternative medical ideas to conspiracy
theories, are far older as concepts and will keep finding ways to enter public
consciousness in new media, even deeply problematic and inhuman ones, and here
we have a work with problematic spiritual issues raised against its creators
whose ideas are vague for me. It instead is a cultural item worth talking of
this way as rather than just through a hollow sceptical dismissal which does not
ask why it exists. Its hippy dippy heart is more potentially poisonous, and yet
this is probably the only time I can write a sentence about a movie involving wedding
sequence with I.V. drip dance choreography. Both the lighter hearted and amused
later comment, and the more serious concern of the former comment, needs to be scrutinised
more than a dismissal, as a lot could be considered and learnt even in forcing
an amateur like myself to have to rewrite a review, meant for fun as a hobby,
at the eleventh hour for a more thought out and considered take.
Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Psychotronic
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low
========
1) In trust that the statements
are accurate to the material gathered for the Alternet article, a loaded title of Ramtha,
New Age Cult Leader, Unleashes Drunken, Racist, Homophobic Rants to Large
Following, published on June 06, 2014, and hopefully not a biased
burial, I find only the phrase "that organic farmers have questionable
hygiene" acceptable to publish here for every reader's sake. From what
Knight has been referred to have said, none of the others are palatable for
myself to have to have in the review even for reference.
2) Referred to in the Artvoice article published on June 9th
2019, called Shadow:
Ramtha Cult Allegedly Recommended Its Students Drink Lye.
3) That animated film, a
continuous of a huge franchise from the nineties, has the even more surreal
touch of Christopher Franke writing
its end theme with German punk/cult musician Nina Hagen of all people singing it. That is not even taking into
consideration that his career before then even included Universal Soldier (1992) to the television franchise Babylon 5.
4) Referred to in the Popular
Science article Cult Science,
published on October 20th 2004 on this subject and with an obviously dismissive
attitude to What the Bleep Do We Know,
admittedly a tone which for me is the kind, for argument's sake, does represent
the tone of language on this subject I would actively avoid even on a
pseudoscience subject I have huge issues with.
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